19 hours on a train will test lots of people and we were no exception. The shared cabin we got into was also habitat by a chap from Switzerland on his way to a wedding in Brasor, and a young Romanian lady who clearly regularly travelled on long trains and was super prepared.
We had brought a load of food and stuffed this in the luggage shelf. We were advised by both cabin guests that the lower bed was always the one to book if you have a choice. We didn’t so we shrugged our shoulders and made the best of it. The train was at 19:00 so it wasn’t long until we all retired. The chap was very chatty but the issue was that he didn’t really want to answer any questions either from us in English or from the lady in Romanian.
It rattled on into the night and we worried that the single loo would become a problem. It wasn’t actually until thr last part of the journey that it was starting to be unusable though so I was more impressed that people took care of it. You really have no choice because you cannot get off or move carriages.
Our lasting impression of this part was how many times you need to blow the train whistle. We were in the first carriage behind the loco so we had a full experience about every minute or so!
We pulled into Bucharest around 14:00 and made our way directly to our hotel with directions. I was still a bit apprehensive about Romania which is more or less unjustified. However it did serve us well because we noticed that lots of roads were closed and a fair few police officers around. We didn’t think anything of it until we checked in and realised from the news that there had been a violent protest about 200 yards from the train station in the opposite direction to where we had headed. This was why the roads were closed!
We had a lovely meal at La Bab only a short walk from our hotel and wandered the streets where we happened upon a wedding couple having their photo taken in front of a Cadillac of all things. They seemed happy enough though.
After a massive sleep we stumbled out of bed into a lovely breakfast place called Bread and Butter where the Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon was to die for. Really good eggs!
The rest of today we mostly did the walking tour of Bucharest and it was so much more compact than Vienna. Fantastic architecture though and clearly some massive potential for refurbishing this city, which again is clearly well under way.
I did end up tripping on a large granite bollard – there are thousands of them so I don’t know why this one chose to pick on me but I was standing at a crossing and it was unknown to me directly in my path. I kicked it with my shin full force and that has pretty much put paid to much other exploring today. We are out tonight at a restaurant with live music from 20:00 so we look forward to that and our next train tomorrow to Istanbul, which is probably the longest on the entire trip at 23 hours 10 mins. Will definitely need food and entertainment for that one although the views are supposed to be amazing and we start in the daytime.