Romania Black Sea Coast - October 2017
In October of 2017, I flew from London Heathrow to Bucharest, Romania to begin a week of meetings and working on the Black Sea coast in the city of Constanta. I went with Matt D. who had been there a few times previously so I felt better about that.
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Where in the world is Romania? It is in far eastern Europe and borders the Black Sea. Its neighbors are Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria. We flew into the capitol city of Bucharest and walked around to see some sights, eat and have a few beers.
Click on maps to get a better view of the geography
Downtown Bucharest was very nice with plenty of restaurants and bars and people out and about.
Romanian money is called the Lei. It was about 5 lei for 1 dollar. No that is not Obama.
The next day we rented a bright blue van and picked up our equipment and began a 3-hour drive east to the city of Constanta on the Black Sea. During the summer, Constanta seems to be a very nice, crowded and popular beach resort. We were there in the off season so many hotels, bars and restaurants were closed for the winter, it was unusual seeing a large town closed for the year.
Photos of Constanta. It is a very old port town and was used by the Greeks several thousand years ago. They like sausages and beer so I was happy.
Romania is full of busy farms growing all kinds of produce. They have bright green John Deere tractors, red tractors that I took to be Russian and they also work the farms by hand and use quite a few horse carts. Also, a lot of shepherds tending to flocks of sheep, to goats, cows and horses. Some shepherds were good at their jobs, some let their animals stay on the road.
Sunrise looking east over the Black Sea from our hotel in Constanta. Second pic is the same scene during the day and then me on the boardwalk next to the beach.
Our trusty blue van got us around Romania without any problems. It was a good idea for our trip.
This was interesting. On our first day in Constanta, we had to work with a grass fire burning on 3 sides of us. This guy was trying to put out the fire.
Is this French fries? No
Fried green beans? No
How about some good fried minnows. I ate half of the bowl and they were not bad. I think of all the minnows that I have bought as bait to catch a bigger fish; I could have been eating minnows all along.
On my last day in Romania, we got up early, got in our trusty blue van and drove from Constanta back to Bucharest. From Bucharest we flew to London Heathrow. I stayed in a hotel at the airport and Matt drove home. The next morning, I flew from Heathrow to DFW. I like to bore people with pictures like this, it helps pass the time on a 10-hour trip.