Day 40: No Rest for the Wicked
Monday August 5 - Day 40 - Rest day - Total 1540miles
We woke up cold! COLD! From the air-conditioning. It felt good! So we did our laundry, hung it up across the cold dry room and headed downstairs. Not wanting to miss out on a beautiful city, we planned on going out for the day. When we went downstairs to reception, we checked on our bikes and they weren't there! WTF! Little did we know, that our bikes were moved outside without our permission by the workmen working on the hotel from 8am to 7pm...they were outside leaning on a column outside the main door where the receptionist said she could keep an eye on them.Then we tried to book our room for second night and were told "NO." What!? Our room was already booked for this evening and there were no air-conditioned rooms left in the hotel. We had to take a different room... no air conditioning... and we had to move all of our stuff from floor to floor including our wet laundry... grrr... But at least it was better than trying to change hotels in the middle of the day... so we wasted an hour but still had a place to stay for 27euro......but no air-conditioning when it is 38C/100F....
After the unexpected change of rooms, we went out to look for food, post cards, bike tubes, sunglasses, and stamps. While looking for food in the grocery store a lady walked up to us and started speaking in French like she knew us... eventually we figured out that she was the mother of the French family (although she did not look like herself since she was nicely dressed with hair and makeup done... and on a bike we never look like that)... we kind of insulted her by not recognizing her... but the family arrived and told us that they had given up and were taking the train to Bucharest and then on to the delta to spend a week of relaxation at the Black Sea. We said "Bon Voyage" as they checked out and we headed back to our shopping quest... We got the sunglasses at the grocery store. Then we found the postcards, no problem. We had to try three different doors before finding the correct part of the post office that sold stamps. The first was the bank part of the post office; the second was the parcel area (we think) and then we were told to go upstairs, where we did find the correct door! The lady was very helpful and gave us all the stamps and made sure we put them in the correct area of the postcard. The stamps were peel and stick and had to be wetted to stick, but the airmail stickers were peel and stick.....usually it is the other way around....
We had lunch at a small cafe which turned out to be exactly like a "Brothers" restaurant from the Boston area, except everything was sold by weight from behind the counter. It makes the ordering process a little inefficient but the food was good. There were stray kittens with their mama hanging out at the patio tables waiting for dropped morsels. The mama was pregnant again, so there will be even more little kitten mouths to feed.
We wrote postcards while in the shade and sent them off on their journey overseas and then we headed out again to find spare tubes. We found the bike shop and they had the correct size of tube but with the wrong valve. The second bike shop had the right valve but wrong size. The third bike shop we were directed to was a toy store that sold a couple of bikes but no parts. Around the corner was a car parts shop, so we asked there if there was anywhere else in town that would sell bike tubes. There was an English speaker in the shop call Lucci who had lived in Seattle for a long time. He directed us to the local flea market where one of the vendors has bike parts. We trekked over there, but unfortunately they didn't have the right size or the right valve......total fail on finding spare tubes in Romania...
To add insult to injury, the sunglasses that Bruce just bought at the Carrefour supermarket earlier in the day broke. The nose connector just completely sheared and left Bruce with two halves of sunglasses! He bought an interim pair at the flea market and we headed back to the Carrefour to complain. Surprisingly, they took back the sunglasses right away and gave us a cash refund, even though we had paid by visa
We went back to hotel to get internet and research what lay ahead for us. Internet was only available in the lobby of the hotel, although they advertise that it is available in the rooms. One of the managers got into an argument with another visitor in Romanian about this. There were very comfy chairs in the lobby area to sit in while using the internet, although you had to watch as the upholstery nails were coming through the padded armrests and we almost impaled our arms a couple of times....
We went out for a walk to find a place for dinner. We asked at the hotel, but they would only say to eat at the hotel restaurant which we really didn't fancy doing. We watched the rotating fountain again and walked around but couldn't really find a good place. We ate at one of the restaurants on the main drag just beside the rotating fountain. The room was still really hot due to the heat of the day and we couldn't really open the windows because of all the bugs (no screens). We were both a little grumpy by then and just went to bed, but it took a while because of the heat.
Onwards into Romania tomorrow!
The World is Ours!