Hi All,
Well we got up in the morning and head off into Sighisoara to be impressed. A quick check of the clock. Yes the figures had moved from day to night so it was walking then a wander around the town. It was 10am and we had seen just about everything in the little town so we headed to the train station and jumped on the train to Sibiu for a day trip. The day started heating up, the carriage started heating up and so the locals started closing the windows which of course made it hotter! One train change and onto Sibiu. Fishermen, sunbakers in the fields, farmers with horse and cart, medieval villages and towns along the way and even an eagle made for an interesting trip.
We had no map when we arrived but figured the old town was where the church was poking out of the buildings and sure enough we found the main square. This was a big town similar to some of the grand spanish towns we had seen in South America. It was really hot so we found a supermarket and a tub of icecream and preceded to eat it all in the shadows. Sure it was another fortified city but it obviously was more prosperous than Sighisoara which was had more country charm but was small. We climbed a medieval tower for a better view then went back down quickly before melting and retreated to a park on the outside of the city walls and sat in the shadows for a while. We returned back to the main square later and just watch children, dogs and adults playing the the fountain in the centre before heading back to Sighisoara. It was a slow trip and each way was about 3hr turning it into a 6hr day trip and with the normal Romanian train delays we didn´t get back to the hostel until after 11pm. A worthy day out!
Next day we headed back to Sinaia to take a break. We stayed at the same self contained apartment and did some more research on the Russia trip. It really is driving up crazy at the moment as we have recruited a specialist travel company to help arrange the trip but it seems that we are still working as hard on the details so it feels like we are just wasting our time. The same applies for the visas. We asked a company to provide visa services. They said fill out our online orders and didn´t answer our questions so again we had to do the research for ourselves. Frustrating. These companies are slick. Get the client to work and then charge them money for it. Well they won´t be getting much if any of ours..
Over the next couple of days we just took it easy and stayed around the apartment only leaving to get some food and drinks from town and our train tickets. Vanessa had previously made pancakes with plain flour but we had gone online and figured out how to make self raising flour using bicarb soda. After a bit of taste tuning they turned out nice and fluffy. Mmmm.
I started getting sick on the last evening and had a temperature by bed time and was quite sick overnight and in the morning we had a 1.5km walk to the train. When I woke I was still sick but a little better and it was a real struggle to walk the distance to the train station. We sat and sat and sat. The rapido (or not so rapido) train was 40min late and it was only 9am in the morning and we only had a 2hr gap before our train left from Bucharest to Sofia in Bulgaria. The train trip was good and gave me some rest and we arrived about 1hr before the connecting train left.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
