The day we came over the Transfagarasan was a long, tiring day of 103km to make it to our destination Corbeni, where we celebrated our milestone ride over a good dinner and bottle of tuica, a local spirit made of plums.
Don looking happy for getting over the hill.
Our next destination was Gaesti, 98km away, and the wind gods were good to us with a strong tailwind pushing us along at 30+ km/hr most of the way. We stopped in Pitesti, a small city to gets Don’s bike fixed and were informed that this was the home town of Bianca Andreescu (the Canadian tennis star who just won the US open). It is not the first time we have heard her name mentioned, the Romanians are proud of her!
Gypsy woman. People in Europe thought these people came from Egypt, hence the term “gypsies”, but they originally came from Northern India. They are usually associated with Romania because Romania embraced them as immigrant workers, but there are gypsy communities all over Europe.Common on the highways at this time of year with the harvest coming inThere are lots of roadside shrinesAnother Hotel California in Gaesti…Complete with hearse……and strange decor
I know I should have stopped at the roadside shrines to thank them for yesterdays wind, as the wind gods were no longer kind to us on our day riding to Bucharest, with 83 km of headwinds all the way on mostly busy roads with no shoulders and heavy traffic.
Harvest time. Potatoes and onions at a roadside stand.Squash for the winter. A couple of days later in Bucharest I bought a filo pastry stuffed with sweet mashed pumpkin. Delicious!Random acts of kindness… We stopped in a small store to purchase some food for lunch (bread and sausage) and the lady refused payment and threw in 2 slices of cheese and 2 cookies. It seems the people in south Romania are much more friendly, as some of them even wave to us first as we ride by.About 20k outside of Bucharest the traffic started stacking up. Prior to this sidewalk we had ridden a few kilometres in a ditch to get around the traffic, as the gap between the trucks and edge of the road was not big enough for our bikes.Finally!
Bucharest is a bustling city of over 2 million people with an interesting mix of old and new. It is not hard to find an old church next to a steel and glass tower that both sit next to a communist style building. And although parts of the central area are run down, other parts have modern malls, fine restaurants, fast food outlets (and lots of patisseries!) and a plethora of trendy young people. The traffic is horrendous, cars double park and the few bicycle lanes are unused, but the city has character.
Lots of communist style buildingsMany of the older buildings like this are banksOldest church in Bucharest – 1545. Given a facelift in 1917.Bucharest bike lane – very few cyclistsIf you can’t find a place to park, park in the bike lane!Streets and streets of apartment blocksChurch tucked away in a corner of the old townPonder this sculpture. Any suggestions?Just a couple of blocks away from the revamped old townElection posters everywhere. There is a strong police presence in the central area.Old and newFriend of Dracula?In Romania men and women share the load of holding up the building!We are staying in an Airbnb on the side of this boulevard which stretches for 1km. It is super wide and lined with fountains the entire way. At the end is the seat of the Romanian government.The administrative building is the world’s largest civilian administration building, the world’s most expensive administrative building valued at 30 billion Euros, and the world’s heaviest building – it is still sinking at a rate of 6mm per year. It’s architectural style is “totalitarian, neoclassical, with socialist realism in mind” i.e. communist. At the other end of the boulevard is a series of fountains that “dance” to music for an hour every night. Everything from rock, “Ke Sera”, and Swan Lake!
Tallinn to Istanbul by Bike 
Good to see that you are both still trucking along!
I have to say you are looking slimmer and stronger!!!
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