Last night, I planned on taking the van to Chisinau, Moldova. I had a full day yesterday in Iasi. I left the hostel and went to the downtown area. First I went to a market where I bought breakfast ( a giant roll and 3 hot peppers), then I walked around, went to a beautiful orthodox church, and a downtown pedestrian mall with a parliament style building at the end. In other cities, I have relied on free walking tours, brochures,etc-but because Iasi doesn't seem very popular amongst tourists, few of these resources are available. Actually, I got lost, as I do sometimes. I took the tram which left near the hostel to some far off point-took a long walk to what looked like downtown-only to find I didn't know where I was. Fortunately, there we're plenty of cabs around, and I took a cab back to the hostel.
At 4:00 or so -I walked to the bus station(about a 45 min walk) to take a bus to Chisinau. The bus was actually a large 20-person van/minibus, and left at 5:30. The 3 1/2 hour ride was as joyous as a bus ride at night on bumpy country roads could be, with just a sort wait at the border checkpoint.
I found the hostel but not easily. There aren't many street signs and the streets aren't well lit-and there are lots of grey communist-style apartment buildings. Plus the directions are made for people who know the city (look for Plunket street-If I have never been here-how would I know there it was?). Eventually I found the hostel-which is on the first floor of a grey communist style apartment building. The hostel was on the right, although the directions seemed to say look on the left hand side of the street.
After check in-I went to dinner-I was hungry-it has been about 4 hours since I ate. I went to a chain restaurant called Andy's Pizza-which looks like a cross between Friendly's and Ruby Tuesdays. It was cheap-for 205 Lei, or around $8.00, I had vegetable soup, salmon with vegetables (which was surprisingly good)-and-because it was cheap-a liter of red wine-which was too much.
After dinner-it was time to find the hostel for bed-I walked back to where I thought it was-and I couldn't find it. I decided to walk back up the hill to Andy's Pizza, where the waitress of course was surprised to see me-and I used my phone to find the exact address of the hostel, and had a cab take me there. Probably the easiest $2.00 the guy ever made.
