Thursday August 11: Bucharest Romania
To the Boat!
I ended up having a so-so night. I got up around 11, and again around 2. The second time, I just could not fall asleep for the longest time. I'm not sure why. I eventually did fall asleep, but I had a very sweaty night. They had the ubiquitous European comforter--either you have nothing over you and you are too cold, or you get under the comforter and are too hot. I slept the rest of the night through, but I was rather sweaty when the alarm went off.
I had my usual breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and an omelet. To be different, I had a latte instead of normal coffee.
For a change, I was ready early, and I wasn't rushing around like a lunatic, and being the last person to be ready.
Our luggage was picked up, and we went down and checked out a bit before the specified time. We hung out in the lobby for a bit, then noticing that people seemed to be leaving, we went out and got on a bus.
Not much to report about the trip--we were driving to the boat, and any sight seeing was completely incidental. We had a stop for lunch (soup, cordon bleu, and Creme Brule), and bathroom breaks in the middle of the morning and afternoon legs.
The lunch stop place featured lots of logs, and a not insignificant number of animal pelts here and there.
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There was a bit of excitement on the afternoon stop. The line for the women's room was really slow moving. Actually, it wasn't moving. It turns out (or so I heard) that the first women in couldn't get the door latch to open, so she was trapped there. Eventually, they got some staff person to free her, and the line started moving again.
About an hour from the end, we noticed that the clouds looked rather dark. A bit later it started raining heavily and we saw at least one lightning bolt. This wasn't good news for me, because all of my raingear was in my suitcase, which wasn't with me.
Fortunately, by the time we got to the boat, it had almost stopped, but not quite. A good welcoming touch was that they had staff standing along the side of the gangplank, holding umbrellas, trying to keep us somewhat dry as we filed in.
We got checked in, got our room cards, and unpacked our luggage into drawers and the closet. This wasn't just for convenience. Literally the only place for the luggage was under the bed, so we really couldn't live out of our luggage like we did in the hotel.
The room is small but nice.
We had a welcome lecture, and then an evacuation drill. Amy and I had signed up for an optional morning cooking excursion, but for whatever reason, it was rescheduled for the afternoon. This conflicted with another optional excursion that I was going on, so I had to cancel the cooking one. On the other hand, that means we can now go on the general morning excursion.
We went to dinner and sat with a pair of Hawaiian couples that we had had lunch with earlier. The boat took off downstream to get to our stop for tomorrow, and while we had a nice dinner, we got a good view of the sunset.
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Amy and I took a quick tour of the top deck, and now I'm writing this up. Very shortly, I'll return to our cabin and see how well I sleep tonight. There is just the gentlest feeling of motion, which might actually help one fall asleep.
I was wondering how they would track who was on board and who was on shore, but apparently your key card is used for that purpose. You scan it when you leave the ship, and then you scan it when you return, and this tracks who is on board.