Our room came with breakfast and we asked Nathalie if we could have it earlier rather than later, so we were all up and ready to eat by 8:30. NS even had WARM water to help wake her up.
We descended the royal looking staircase and saw the same people working the front desk and the concierge desk as when we came in yesterday. The concierge even smiled at my Russian 'good morning' greeting.
We had to pick up our breakfast receipts, walk them across the lobby to give to the woman behind the counter at the bar. She looked at them and said, "coffee?" She had that Soviet "she who must be obeyed" look about her. Both S2 and I hesitantly asked, "tea?" To which she replied, "black?" Da. NS asked for juice, but she was directed to look at the soft drink fridge and settled on bottled water. We went to sit down at the bar (or was it a display case for Moldovian wines? Some were in moonshine-like jugs) and she pointed us to the small, VERY formal dining area.
Breakfast was a slice of bread with cheese, a dill omelette (or was it dill made to look like an omelette?), two slices of tomato and 3 slivers of very small cucumbers.
Packed up and on our way out of the city by 10:00, I found Carmen San Diego recognized no destinations in Moldova, so we had to program her for a destination in Romania, and hope she didn't take us through the Ukraine to get there. Moldova is shaped like a scalene triangle, with the narrowest part at the bottom where the Ukraine and Romania come together. We got out of town and found she had us on a major expressway (WOW). of course, that eventually gave out and we were back to the rough roads we expected. We turned Carmen San Diego off and used our Romania map with Moldova edges to get us south. This enabled us to blast our communal playlist through the speakers (Carmen San Diego and the iPod both use the cigarette lighter for charge). Nothing like driving by fields of sunflowers, vineyards, and corn, listening to Rolling Stones "you can't always get what you want", Starships "nothings going to stop us now" and that hilarious Bowling for Soup stuff that NS likes.
Some of us grow up knowing about John Deere tractors, others of us learn about Beloruss tractors.
There seemed to be a bustling Sunday market in every size able town we went through, but parking was minimal! We also didn't stop to buy any of the peaches at roadside stands. Thus, we were at the border around 2:00. The next two hours were somewhat confusing as we waited in lines of no more than 4 or 5 cars, but Moldova had to look our passports over, look in the car for cigarettes, and write down (no computer) the license plate number of the car. Romanian border officials did mostly the same thing. There customs official looked a bit like Lyle Lovett, dressed in really tight camp, with an exceptionally thin waist. (One DOES NOT attempt to take photos at border crossings). The Immigration official seemed impressed that we worked at an international school in Germany and was quite impressed that Nathalie spoke German. As we were coming back in the EU, I had the insight to also give them our German ID cards, which is how they knew we were working there. I like to think the official was tickled that we were getting out and seeing more than Germany.
Carmen San Diego back on, we seemed to weave our way through the port side of Galati, and were shocked when she had us stop at a river and say "Proceed driving on the Dn229a". What????
It was a ferry to take us across the Danube River.
We were headed into the UNESCO recognized Danube Delta. We located a pension at the base of some monument on a hill (one of our stumble upon great finds) in Tulcea.
The proprietor gave us incredible attention with our dinner. There weren't a lot of choices on the menu, and he made sure to let us know what we could have (different than those places, who give you the menu and don't say anything about what they have or don't have, and when they don't have your first three choices, you just point at something ... This is how Nathalie ended up with duck liver one night...and ate it, granted not all of it, but she sure tried.)
He brought a complementary shot of something really good before the meal, and incredible carafe of wine with dinner, and when we moved inside because the mosquitoes were eating S2 alive, he brought us slices of the most remarkable cake. He insisted it was made on site, not from a store.
He helped us understand that S2 couldn't just cycle into the delta tomorrow, so, we went to bed not knowing what we were going to do the next day.
I have a more recent understanding of the scientific process behind the making of a River delta, thanks to my daughter and that remarkable 6th grade Science teacher she had in Rotterdam. After crediting her source of information, she added, "but I'm a Physics type gal now, Newton's Laws of Motion and all."
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