The Dracula Tour--Part II

When we went downstairs to check in for our flight, we met the tour group. Maybe it was the excitement or the two glasses of wine, but suddenly we were being hurtled towards the check in counter and shoved on an earlier flight. We found it strange and quite disconcerting as in all our year of travel, we’d never had British Air shove us on an earlier departing flight, with no reason given other than, “Hurry, the flight will be boarding soon!”

Oh those nutty French.

Soon we were being loaded on a flight and I was being separated from my husband to spend the next seven hours next to two strangers.
Fortunately there was an empty seat and with the help of a lovely French expatriate named Pascale, the stewardesses obliged and let me join Jordan in the front of the cabin.

The flight was pretty uneventful until when landed in Paris.

Although we’d been in Paris before, we took the train through the Channel tunnel. Having to negotiate Charles de Gualle airport was another story. Once we disembarked we had to take a bus to the next terminal, which of course was the last terminal on the route. Once we arrived there, we had just enough time to get a bottle of water go through security and board the flight.

Or so we thought.

It turned out that a severely disabled man had been left on the flight and the company that was to arrange transfer had not arrived. We waited two hours in a rather small waiting area, with no bathroom for the next two hours. I feared my bladder might suffer irrepairable damage.

As soon as we were allowed on the flight, I headed post haste to the loo. (Like you needed to know that, right?)


By the time we finally landed in Bucharest, we were all anxious to grab our luggage and head to the hotel. That would have been too easy. Four members of our party had their luggage lost in transit so by the time we waited for them to fill out forms, we were right in the middle of rush hour traffic in Romania.

Eventually we made it to the hotel and after about 22 hours of travel we were all worse for the wear, but we, along with our new best friends from Cali needed to partake of the kind of refreshment that can only an adult beverage can impart. We tried the local pilsner, Ursus, then we tried a few glasses of the local wine before deciding to take a wee walk about with two more of our group, Steve from NY and Juan from Santa Cruz. After about a ten minute walk, we ended up stopping for a bite to eat at the Waterloo restaurant in Bucharest.

One of the first and most joyous things we discovered about Romania was the exchange rate. Since we usually pay $3 for every Maltese lira and $2 for every British pound, it was immensely gratifying to spend one American greenback for two Romania lei. At the Waterloo restaurant that meant paying just four bucks for a large Chimay. Although the pictures of us at the restaurant illustrate just how zonked we were, we did feel better after having some soup and bacon crepes.

Then sated and exhausted, we headed back to the hotel.
Yup, this Romanian thing was starting off pretty well.