Day Two. Romania.

I've never experienced a runway quite like the one at Cluj airport, it was like landing on a typical British side road.   However the trip through passport control was smooth, I did laugh when I heard a English accent proclaim "Well it's almost a queue."

Another thing that hit us on arrival was the heat, after leaving Doncaster in the high single figures, 25 Degrees Celsius, was a bit of a shock. Maybe we should have brought more shorts!

Our friends Crina and Ioana kindly took time off work to meet us off the plane, and gave us a whistle stop tour of Cjuj-Napoca centre, which was handy when we explored on our own later.

Our first three nights are in the Pension Deja vu, which is just over the river from town centre.  We chose this place for it's location and it's quirkiness, I will post photo's when we return to the UK.  The hotel is well used, but clean, and our room is massive, king size bed, three piece suite, walk-in wardrobe, tables, dresser, TV, air conditioning and mini bar. We are very pleased to have got such a room for less than £70 bed & breakfast for the three nights.

Our exploration of Cluj revealed a beautiful town with a juxtaposition of concrete tower blocks and Gothic cathedrals.  The squares and the parks were pretty, and full of people enjoying the weather.

I'd set myself the challenge of finding a good beer bar, something Carolyn had warned me wasn't possible in Cluj.  We did find some great bars, a couple had a limited selection of big brewery beers.  Our last attempt, on our way back to the hotel, led us to http://www.klausenburger.ro A pub with on-site brewery, now this was more like it, I'm not going to say more here, but I will be writing a full post at some point at www.original-gravity.blogspot.com

The evening meal in the hotel was enjoyable, if a little inconsistent.  Carolyn had steak medallions on a bed of mash with a bilberry "mirror", I had a mixed grill.  Carolyn's steak was really good, my meal was the inconsistent one.  My plate had two smoked sausages, chicken, pork fillet (I think), steak, pork tenderloin, chips and vegetables. The tenderloin was plaited around small pieces of garlic, and was fantastic, the sausages were really nice.  Whilst waiting for the food you could hear the chef beating the shit out of something, he was tenderising my steak, it didn't work.  However there was a lot of food on my plate, and I did finish feeling very full and still leaving what wasn't too good.