The Danube Delta

The last leg of our 3-week journey took us to the delta of the Danube River, which flows out into the Black Sea. To reach Tulcea (the main town of the delta), we had to take the train back to Bucharest from Brasov, and then the bus to Tulcea.

We had organised to our accommodation in a small village about 20km from Tulcea, called Murihiol, we were staying at a farmed owned by a Ukrainian chap called Sergei. The plan was to take the bus there from Tulcea, but as arrived to late to catch the last one, Sergei had to pick us up with his trusty old Dacia (the local car manufacturer in Romania - basically they manufacture Renault cars on a licence. The latest model, the Logan, is apparently pretty sought-after in France as well because it's cheap simple enough to fix by yourself if you know what you're doing!).



We got up very early the next morning, to go and explore the delta with Sergei, who owns a boat. It was a very fascinating day indeed, as he took us down the one of the main rivers, but also down small canals, and also through a lake. The Danube delta is one of the main bird- (the ones with wings ;-) watching (regions in Europe, and it was actually quite interesting even if it's not really my thing... The delta is particularly famous for its pelicans; they nest here before flying down to the Nile for the winter. We also saw a fox, loads of frogs, a couple of sea snakes, and a vulture (not to mention loads of other birds of various description).



In the afternoon, we went to see some nice ruins near our village, dating from the 2nd-6th century AD. Unfortunately, there were no explanations or signs about the ruins, since the excavations are still very much in progress (it was quite funny to see somebody's lunch bag casually amongst some of the excavated items...).

The next day we took a longer trip with the boat, heading out all the way out to the Black Sea, via a very nice lagoon (where we saw a large group of pelicans), to one of the main villages by the coast, Sfantu Gheorghe (there wasn't really all that much to see there, I reckon Sergei took us here so he could have a pint with his mates...). Then back to Murihiol it was...



The next morning it was unfortunately time to pack up and head back to Bucharest to catch our flight back to Nice. We had a bit of a scare the night before because we realised that we didn't have enough money to pay our host (let's just say that we paid a bit more for the boat trips than expected...) - and our bus was really 1st thing in the morning, and on a Sunday... So we really hoped the cash points in Tulcea would work... (and they did, fortunately).




We didn't have a lot of time in Bucharest, but we did manage to visit the Jewish quarter of Bucharest before though - an interesting area even if only a couple of synagogues remain from that period....