Bucharest at last!

A faithful reader e-mailed to ask if anything is wrong. She hasn't seen a new blog post in a couple of days. 

Nothing is wrong - it's just that we have been far from Internet cafés, dependent on the very slow shipboard connection just to get mail. 

For us the Danube ended yesterday, in Cernovoda. The port is a long way from the actual exit of the Danube into the Black Sea, but very few large boats venture into the Danube Delta.

So we loaded onto coaches for an hour and a half run to Constanta, on the edge of the Black Sea, where we could enjoy its blue color and saltwater smell. (The Danube is brown - all brown  - and in Cernovoda it is very slow and full of mysterious floating objects.)

Constanta, like so many of the places we visited along the Danube, was a Roman city for a long time (and a Greek one before that.) One of its most famous citizens in ancient times was the poet Ovid, exiled here for the crime of writing the Metamorphoses. The serious-looking statue was given to Constanta by the Italian government many years ago. (The other may have been inspired by Ovid's risqué verses - who knows?)

After Constanta we proceded to Mamaia, a fancy resort farther up the coast, where we were guests of a beachfront hotel for lunch and water access. This meant plastic lounge chairs under umbrellas advertising Coke or Ursus Beer, and masses of people baring as much flesh as you can imagine to the hot sun. On the whole, we were happy to be back at the ship, in plenty of time to get ready for the Captain's farewell reception and dinner.

This morning it was bags out by 8:15, load the coaches by 9:15, and drive to Bucharest, through miles and miles of wheat, sunflowers, and soybeans.

"This could be Kansas," someone said. 

Bucharest looks nothing like Kansas, unless Kansas has suddenly sprouted block after block of crumbling Soviet-era apartments. As you get closer into town, the apartments get a bit better looking, and there are occasional streets filled with large pre-war houses, in varying states of repair. 

Bucharest is booming. Since the blogger-in-chief was last here, in 2005, many new glass towers have appeared, and what is even more important is that many old public buildings are covered in scaffolding and plastic, being repaired at last.

"If you come back to Bucharest in a few years you will see many good changes," said the guide.