Tuesday 22nd October
After yesterdays tough ride from Silistra on the Bulgarian)Romanian border I decided to take a day out and luxuriate in mv somewhat faded 5 star accommodation.
I managed to get the data sorted with Vodafone on my iPhone, I think it broke because I tried calling the UK on my Romanian number. This wasn’t allowed so basically I lost my data plan. £9 later I walked out with another 1GB of data all working.
I went into a few travel agents, but they all laughed and thought I was nuts wanting to return to Budapest on a boat 🙁 The town itself is one hell of a mess with all the pavements torn up whilst they are laying miles of ducting for cables, interestingly using masses of labour rather than diggers. Took a lot of effort to find a coffee shop but worth the wait to find Zoomserie and it’s yummy ice cream & pleasant staff after a haircut it was back to the hotel.
In the afternoon I took myself of to the docks & Pier 31,the grain terminal. Fascinating to see the huge queue of trucks waiting to unload the corn alongside the hundreds of rusting, disbanded railway wagons. I spoke to the manager who rang the shipping company but it was all no can do. I pottered off to the ships that were loading corn up. One was off to Izmir, i suspect if I had $150 to thrust in his palm I could have had a lift, but didn’t fancy Turkey just yet. The other boat was of to Pakistan. It’s interesting and I feel you can travel this way but you need hard cash in your pocket & your stuff with you. Another time maybe…
So basically there seems to be no straight forward way to get a boat back up The Danube from Constanta. Tomorrow I continue to find The Danube,
and i am still not convinced that you would enjoy it on a boat for any length of time…
& I think the thousands it would cost could be better spent 🙂