Wednesday, 4 May, 2016 Mainz and Bucharest

We are up very early, someone got up hours early from a too early moment. Nevermind, we have to go. A last photo of Karim’s apartment:

We are out the door at 5:30 and catch the 6:03 train to the airport. German trains inefficent as usual, arrive at the airport 2 minutes late.

At the airport we put up with the necessary personal infringements, I had to strip off 3 layers of clothes to get through the scanners, unfriendly immigration folk as we exited, but that is what the “glamourous jetsetting life” is about. Into the lounge, which is quite large as you might expect. A lot of snacks but the only hotfood was scrambled eggs. Crap lunch meats instead of hams. Give it a 5 out of ten, should have been better to mine. Board the plane, the usual chaos but as we are in Business Class we do OK. Meal is cold stuff, not my favourite, and no alcohol, I probably would have said no any way. OK flight, otherwise.

Arrive in Bucharest and the first thing we notice is that it is pouring rain outside. We get to immigration and there is a longish queue to get through. It moves OK, and we are out. We get to baggage and suitcases from our flight are going around. In spite of our priority bags, it is ages before ours finally come out, over 30 minutes or more.

When we finally escape, we are met by Alexandra, a delightful girl we enjoy meeting. She is our guide for the next 6 days and it looks like we have done well selecting her. Out to the carpark, in the rain a bit. Then more chaos as they have closed off exits, and then a car blocks the exit, but eventually we are on the road and drive through a lot of traffic in the rain and reach our Hotel.

We are waiting for Alexandra to return from parking the car. First Julie goes up to the room with the suitcases and when she comes down still no Alexandra. So I go up to clean my teeth etc and when I come down they are gone. I find them out on the street, in the rain, and they go off briefly to some shops.

Alexandra had organised for a massuese to come to the room for deep massages. Julie gets back just before he arrives with her goodies.

We both had 90 minutes on the table. In my case he really dug in deep and there were a few bruises afterwards. Julie loved the massage. After it was finished, we had a booking at the restaurant across the street so we headed over there.

We are seated and it takes a while before anyone pays attention to us. Finally, we order some wine which is brought to us by our waiter along with menus. BTW: it is a huge place inside too.

The menu was quite comprehensive and it was difficult to make choices. The waiter tried to help but his suggestions were all meals for two which did not really suit. Eventually we make decisions.

The horse radish was not very strong, sad, and the marrow was not as flavoured as the one Julie had had in Mainz. Then came the main course.

Julie said that the stew had good flvaour but there were lots of bones within. Very Romanian dish.

It wasn’t really a confit but there was lots of nice duck. It was served with pink peppercorns – very 1980s. I liked it.

Back to the room, it had been a long day and after a few more grapes we crashed out.