Constanta, on the beaches of the Black Sea

A pic of the Black Sea that Anthony snapped earlier today. Not much more to say about it, but it's a pic of a body of water that I'd never seen before.




This was Bob, a random turtle swimming under a bridge when I snapped a pic of him. I'm not exactly sure if he's actually named Bob, but he wouldn't say shit when I took his pic so I gave him a name. :-p




The local currency, Lei or Ron at some points... 3 Lei ~ $1. So we go to places and it says 15 Lei for pizza and we'll also get two beers for 6 Lei also... we end up paying < $10 for our meal. Tipping is not something that happens much it seems, and when it is done, 10% is expected... any more is crazy to them...lol. I'm ok with that. Oh, and apparently, when you order a "margherita" pizza, which we know in the states as having some tomato slices and basil along with some different cheese, is rather different here. Two nights in a row we've ordered the same thing and ended up getting a cheese pizza...lol. That will be the last we order of that type of pizza in Romania. Yes, we have found ourselves in Italian restaurants the past couple nights, but only because they had awesome outdoor seating, which I've found to be one of the more awesome parts about the eateries and cafe's around here. They have just as much outdoor seating as they do indoor. With the weather the way it's been, it's actually nicer to sit outside anyway.




Seriously, this is as normal of a parking job in Romania as parking in a spot in the parking garage at Macy's is to us.




Another random pic of me that Anthony took where I'm not wearing a hat... amazing huh? Note the typical parking job in the back...lol.




Our past couple nights have started out at this place in Bucharest. Caru Cu Bere, as I mentioned previously is roughly translated to Carriage of Beer. They have been around since 1879 and brew their own beer, which we later found is pretty much an unfiltered wheat that's similar to our Widmer Hef. beer... and actually, Anthony and I both agreed that Widmer makes a better Hef. Being old skool does not a good beer make. In all actuality, it seems like Heineken has the market cornered in Romania. It seems like everywhere we go we try and ask for a different beer, only to be told that they're "out" and that they have Heineken and that's it. So, Romania get's a "D" for it's beer grade. While we've had a few decent beers over the last few days, nothing stacks up in any way to what we're used to back in Portland, our land of great beer.



One of the coolest bartenders we've met on this trip. Oksana.


We stumbled on a bar that was open at 10am on a Sunday since we needed to wait on our train to Constanta and needed something to take up some time. She gave me free wifi in her bar and gave us peanuts when she couldn't make any food yet...lol. Very cool girl and she's pretty much the typical cute Romanian type of chick that this place is made up of. The pic of me sucks since my eyes are closed but it's the only one we got so it'll have to do.



So once we got to Constanta, we got stuff in the hotel and decided to walk down to the beach. Apparently we are some pretty damn easy targets to wannabe scammers so we had to fight off a lot of BS scam artists doing shit all night. This kind of became a pain in the ass, it seems that we were in a good part of Bucharest since we didn't see much of this gypsy way of life, until we got here and it became a bit of a pain in the ass. It seemed like every person we'd run across was looking to screw us over in some way or another... they put kids into their scams and just randomly say hi and want to talk you up and then 10 seconds later you get some guys with fake politia badges wanting to see our papers... When this happened I just said, C'mon Anthony, just walk... and they seemed to just go away. It really made me think this area is kinda bleh because it's so prevalent here.

We're going to hang out here tomorrow and take a 1am train to another place in Transylvania to see a few castles. I'm looking forward to that since I'll probably feel more ok pulling out my big DSLR instead of leaving it in my bag thinking that someone's looking to jack it right out of my hands at some point. That's about all for tonight, we're staying in a hotel with an awesome AC so I'm looking to catch up on some much needed sleep that I've yet to have since we left on Thursday morning.

noapte buna. (Good night)