So near and yet so Spa

 

Well sleep watchers,  recalibrated a little of that lost recently with a bit of a blackout, so much so did not make my intended early start to the gym, and groggily got underway well after 9, with the gym falling down the timetable.

Breakfast shot up the timetable and with not having included it with our hotel, we took a quick glance up a nearby street, passed a church, another one of those xclusive bars (not so exclusive then) and hopped into the first cafe we could find.  Nuba it was called, ryhmes with Uber, who we are making a lot of use of on this trip.

Went for chille eggs and coffee, which turned out to be a winning combination and something very different to start the day. A little bit of avacado, toast and salad to accompany and felt nicely set up.

The morning was sliding away from us so uber needed to get us back on track. One of the big sights around here was the Thermal Resort. In my head, with Bucharest delicately balanced on a tectonic plate, was thermal water, springs, steam, volcaonolgy. A Blue Lagoon of the south if you will..

So the best bits of this experience was the drive to the 'resort' and leaving the 'resort'.

The drive to, with a very local uber fella, navigating traffic in a particularly local way, gave us chance to see a few of the sights. Chief on the list a mini Arc de Triomphe and a political protest. The latter pretty much ten a penny out here, but democracy a bit creaky, and pleased to see the masses make their point. Not sure what the point was, we think a version of Brexit, Rexit perhaps?

On arriving at the thermal springs, the queues were huge, Disney Land meets the East. Chrissi got us up the line with an online booking, but the number of people did not appeal. And then we had to all strip down to our trunks and spend the next 3 or 4 hours rubbing shoulders with them.

In all honesty my first impressions inside was Swansea Leisure Centre with a few fake palm trees and treatment rooms.  The hydra slide did take me back to the 80s and was fun, and a few moments of peace in a sauna (when I closed my eyes) the highlights, but the bar was low. Hundreds of people fighting for spots in the different pools for the bubbles and wading their way to the many walk up bars. Serious tat and tackiness.

It was huge, with sections for sun beds, and loads of places to sit if you got in early enough and secured a bed with a towel, but 6000 plus people crammed into an over grown greenhouse. No thank you. None of the many pools you could actually swim in. Pointless with a capital P.

So pleased to be back out in the open air, and with buses taking 2 hours back into town via the airport, it was another Uber, fighting through the Bucharest traffic.  Door to door to hotel though, where I was able to pop down into the fitness centre and take out my frustrations on a 5K Tread.

That done it was out into the streets of Bucharest, and a lovely walk to their massive parliament building.  En route we found glimpses of Xmas past, and a beautifully appointed Natural History Museum, very palatial, formerly called the Palace of the Posts.

The Parliament Building, massive in its own right, sits proudly at the end of a boulevard which hosts its Xmas market ... up until the 26th December. Much to the girls disappointment they had packed up Xmas and gone home.  The building quite magnificent and quite big a pet project of the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and part of his massive urban planning project, systemisation he called it (following '77 Earthquake, they do have the odd big one. 1500+ people died!)  I understand it is the largest parliament building in the world (over 1000 rooms) and the worlds second largest building depending on what scale, measurement and list you look at!

The cultured walk done it was time for a bar crawl.  Bastard sadly not open, looks like that's going to be a bastard fail on this trip. Next door though a Transylvanian Brewery, where even Carys had a low alcohol blood red (well rasberry) beer .. ha ha ha (evil dracula style laugh)

Bit of a hunt for food after that led to the 3rd disappointment of the day as particular vegi requirements not met in a lovely homely restaurant so we had a massive stein of local beer instead.

Starting to feel nowhere would now be open for food but Jacks bar (where else?) came to the rescue and we ended the evening with football, beer, and burgers in the heart of the old town. Yes, the cultural conflict is real but after a few beers, not hugely of concern!