Too Many Cars Too Little Space

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Eggs for breakfast. This morning we made omlettes using some borrowed cheese from the fridge; it was a good change from the dry bread we are now well accustomed to. We spent a while over breakfast chatting to Charlie and generally enjoying the luxuary of breakfast.

We decided to head into Bucharest without the guidebook to see if we could stumble across something of interest that wasn't a tourist trap. We walked along our main road and down towards Piata Unirii occasionally stopping to look around a shop. Neither of us were particularly impressed with Bucharest and were both becoming hot and tired. We nipped to a supermarket to grab some fruit and water and seeing as though we were opposite a park, we thought we'd eat there. We walked all around the park and other than benches we would have to have shared with beggars, there was nowhere to sit. Eventually we spotted a patch of grass in the shade and sat down. There was a guy passed out on the grass a little way away from us and he stank of wee. We would have moved but there was absolutely nowhere else to sit, so we ate quickly and left.

We set off back in the direction of the hostel and attempted to see the area in a nice light. One thing we did like was that in amongst the massive high rises and shopping centres were little churches that you could almost overlook as they were dwarfed by their surroundings. Unfortunately the churches were surrounded by big, ugly almost derelict high rises.

Hot and bothered, we decided to go back to our hostel to relax until the sun set. At the hostel we both showered and spent some time catching up on e-mails, watching some tv, and chatting to other people around the hostel. We used this time to look up Bucharest on the tourist sights to see if there were any must sees in the city. There aren't really.

Not really knowing what to do with ourselves we decided to head a bit out of the city centre to try and find Bucharesti mall and it's multiscreen cinema. Our map didn't stretch quite as far as the mall, so we scribbled down the name of the road it was on and set off. To cut a long story short, we couldn't find it and after a few pretty decent arguments we settled upon finding a restaurant from Lonely Planet. True to form the restaurant no longer existed so we decided on our fall back; a restaurant recommended by the hostel but one which they were unsure as to whether it had vegetarian dishes.

We arrived at the restaurant fairly late in the evening but the waiters beckoned us in. We sat outside on the terrace warmed by a patio heater. We shared a cheese plate to begin with as this is fast becoming a new fad of ours, Rob faithfully finished off the blue cheese which I really can't stand. My meal was a plate of butterbeans diguised under the title of Bean Stew. Rob had stuffed peppers which is normally one of his favourite meals, but he didn't enjoy it because it was "crap" as he delightfully put it. Around the time we were finishing our meals, the waiters became impatient and started to pack away around us. There were plenty of people still sitting inside and so we decided not to be rushed.

We hadn't quite managed to finish the sizeable cheese plate so we took it back to the hostel with us and put it in the fridge for anyone to help theselves to. At the hostel we sat and socialised for a bit with a few people who were still awake before climbing into bed

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