Our holiday

Here is the promised post about what we did over the holiday season. Those of you who have been following my blog will know that our second daughter was married last June and went to live in Romania. Well, the long and short of this is that we went to see them!

We set out from Tarragona at just gone midnight on the 23rd of December, on a coach that would take us to Bucharest, where my daughter lives. We passed through the whole coast of Catalonia, on into France, then Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and finally across through Romania to the capital, where we were met by our son-in-law at 8.00 pm on the 24th. (44 hours)

A. and D. have such a lovely apartment in the capital, a little back from the main road. It has lots of light and not much need for heating as the apartment is extremely well insulated and the heat from the apartments which are joined to theirs is enough, although the temperatures were very low outside. At the back there is a kiddy park, black squirrels running up and down the trees and A. has a pet dove that she feeds crumbs to every day.

The very next day we went to visit D's parents, an hour out of the city, in a town called Ploiesti. We had a wonderful day with some of his family. D's mother is a fantastic cook and she made us some good traditional food:

Ciorba

Sarmale - meat and rice wrapped up in a pickled cabbage leaf

Mamaliga - a stiff dough made from corn semolina

Strudel cu mere for desert, I think, in total, I ate at least seven of these things. They were soooo good

The second day we were there, in the evening, it started to snow... and snow...snow... and more snow. Here is a photo of that aforementioned kiddy park taken the next day:

On the Saturday we took the underground train and visited downtown Buchuresti in the late afternoon/evening. Awesome city. Here are some photos that I have actually taken from internet because it was already too dark for my camera to do a decent job.

Arcul de Triumf

The Dambovita river

Casa Poporului or, literally, 'House of the people'

Casa de economii si Consemnatiun

Sunday was Sunday. We spent the day once again with D's parents and plenty more of his family and friends. We felt welcomed by almost everyone and by now we were picking up a good quantity of Romanian words. That evening we had supper with D's brother and his wife who live in the converted attic above his parent's house.

On Monday, 29th of Dec. we travelled to the Transylvanian area of Romania and visited Bran Castle. This is where Frankenstein used to live. An absolute must if you visit Romania. I took very few photos. Why? Because that day it was 18º C below zero and I really did NOT want to take my hands out of my pockets or take my gloves off too often! I'm sure my daughter has some better ones.

One of the castle towers

Centre patio with well included. It was here that we stood still just long enough to hear D. tell that joke about Dracula and the tower.

View out over the snowy countryside from one of the castle windows.

On the Tuesday we had an early-ish lunch and then headed off once more for Ploiesti where we were going to spend the rest of the year! There was lots of yummy food - in fact we had a barbecue! These were the star of the show for me:

Romanian sausages or mititei

Apparently, we had the coldest end of year that Romania has had for fifty years, with the lowest temperatures registering 23.5º C below zero. At 11.30 pm a bunch of us wrapped up warm and went to see a spectacular firework display in the centre of Ploiesti. We all hugged, cheered and wished each other a happy New Year. Then we headed back to the house for chocolate cream cake and more blackberry tuika (pronounced tsueekuh). My, if that stuff doesn't warm you up then you have a problem!

New Years Day was spent at my daughter's place. She prepared a traditional Catalonian dinner and then we did our invisible family present giving thing in the afternoon. Fun, fun, fun. After, we 'skyped' with family back at home and in England and also wished Iaia a very happy 86th birthday. Then, all but Hubby decided it was time to go out and have fun in the dark, in a park, in the snow. So, that is exactly what we did. Unfortunately, it ended with the youngest member of the gang slipping on snow-covered ice and breaking his arm.

On the Friday D. and A. treated us to a meal in a beautiful restaurant in the centre of Buchuresti. The food was well priced and most awesomely delicious! (Photos from Google images)

The street sign

Inside

The wooden staircase

The menu

Ciorba served in a hollowed out loaf of bread

We spent the Saturday home and then on Sunday we said goodbye to S. very early in the morning as he had to return home a day earlier than the rest of us. Sunday was Sunday and we went to Ploiesti in the morning, had lunch with D.'s  parents, said goodbye to everyone there and headed back to base. We packed and had an early supper as we had to leave on our coach at 4.00 am the next morning.

The journey home took 48 hours. We were stopped a long time on the Hungarian border, half the time in a snow blizzard. Then again we were stopped by Italian police who were checking passports on the Slovenian/Italian border and once more when we crossed over into Catalonia. We arrived at our own home at 7.30 am on the 7th of January. We spent most of the morning picking up on sleep as we only slept about 4 or 5 hours during the whole voyage. Even then, we never got to sleep more than hour at a time because the coach stopped too frequently for much more!

Here are some more snow photos:

Icicles

Roadside stores. The thermometer in the car registered 8º C below zero here!

The Carpathian Mountains

Well, I really hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed reliving all these beautiful moments. One thing is for sure, I'm going back as soon as I possibly can. Now to learn a few more words...