Paris-Pekin 13-14 April

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Sunday 13 April - Rosiori de Vede to Bucharest, 145 km

Slept OK in the gymnasium despite some people snoring and a rainstorm at one point during the night. At 6.15 am the lights went on and we packed everything away and loaded it into the lorries and cycled off for breakfast at the same place as last night’s dinner. Not a lot there for me - lots of charcuterie and a little cheese, and bread and honey: for some reason we don’t seem to get jam in Roumania. At least there was coffee, the essential, and I had a very nice pear from the shopping expedition last night.
We had a police escort out of town. The weather was very fine, warm and sunny, apparently it was 29 degrees.
We passed through an extraordinary village full of the most extravagant ornate houses. One of the Roumanian cyclists told me it was a gypsy village, and all the big houses belonged to rich gypsies who tried to out-do each other. Very peculiar.
There are the odd houses of this type here and there in other places - often with metal-covered pinnacled roofs, a bit in the Chinese style. Some of the churches also have metal-covered roofs, I don’t know what metal it is, silver coloured and quite shiny.
About 20 km short of Bucharest we regrouped and were joined by two groups of schoolchildren from some of the schools who are linked to the Paris-Pekin expedition. We rode into the city, through the city which is quite attractive, with parks and fountains and nice buildings in the centre (including of course the palace) and a very long cobblestoned avenue lined with trees on the way out … not just out of the centre, but out of town.
After 18 km longer than expected, we ended up at an airport hotel 16 km from the centre of Bucharest, where we have a day off. A lot of people are not at all happy about this. I enquired at Reception about local facilities and they said there was a supermarket at the airport. I got the free hotel airport transport car and spent some time at Bucharest airport (tempting to buy a flight home!). It is quite a nice new little airport. I changed some money (better rate than at the hotel, at least) and found the supermarket and stocked up with water, juice, cereal bars and instant meals (as I suspect I will need these on bivouac nights).
There was even a Costa Coffee so I got an iced cappuccino which was the best coffee I’ve had for ages.
Hotel minibus back to the hotel, a couple of drinks in the bar and lots of typing. Must try to do photo transfers and blog tomorrow.

Monday 14 April - Bucharest

Good breakfast - this is a nice hotel. Took some of the bikes to the localcar wash and hosed them down, then cleaned and oiled and pumped the tyres, ready for another week.
Took a bus into Bucharest in the afternoon but found it fairly run down and depressed, besides which it was raining. Could not find postcards anywhere. Got a tube a few stops and looked for the main Post Office; after about half an hour of asking people and walking around in the rain finally found a post office, but certainly not the main one. They actually had a few postcards, so we bought their entire stock - five1 and stamps. I managed to end up with three of them.
Persuaded the others (four of us) to get a taxi back to the hotel, which cost 30 lei (about £6 I think).
I found a jacket in a remainder shop in the town for 10 lei, about £2, which kept me a bit warm as I had gone out in just a teeshirt.
After dinner did some email and blog on the hotel free WiFi till the battery on the computer ran out. So many people doing the same thing there were no ele4ctric points available to recharge it.

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Comments

[david2012]

thanks
you gave me difrent view of romania .. thanks god