Getting started

This is the first chance of updating the blog – Viking have kept TSH and Diva very busy indeed. The day in Bucharest, whilst interesting, was very long and tiring. The morning starts are early – especially if you are already 2 hours ahead of home. They saw the enormous palace built for the dictator Ceausescu – he never lived in it!! So far, no significant rain, other than a thunderstorm during dinner.

Romania is now finished and the ship has moved on to Bulgaria. Diva resisted the cosmetic products made with Bulgarian roses – the pure oil is more expensive than gold!! But she had succumbed in Bucharest to the locally developed anti-ageing cream.

In this area, both Romania and Bulgaria are very agricultural.

The food and service on board are as good as ever and TSH and Diva have already eaten chateaubriand. No time yet to drink the welcome champagne.

Creatures spotted along the way: A (model) giraffe outside the Bucharest natural history museum. Storks nesting on the top of telegraph poles. A rare black stork. A stegosaurus lurked in the trees but this may also have been a model.

Cork oak

Lunch was taken at a winery, followed by a bakery and a visit to a museum. The bakery was an OCD’s nightmare. Tourists wandered around a grubby little shop, handling the bread, which was also appreciated by the flies. No samples crossed Diva’s lips. More interesting was the cooperative winery, where everything was stainless steel and shining clean. The guide, who was one of the plant managers, wore a t-shirt with a slogan on the back – “Follow me, I know where the wine is”. During these visits, many glasses of wine were tasted.

The roads in this area are steep, narrow, winding and with great drops to the side – sometimes without a wall, hedge or post between the road and the edge. The drivers really are very good and the vehicles are all brand new and owned by Viking.

By the side of the road were many cork oaks, some with red trunks, where the cork had been removed, and the guide explained that they were harvested every 8 or 9 years. Someone asked whether it killed the trees when the bark was removed!

The disembarkation briefing conveyed the usual information about coloured luggage tags, times of disembarkation and the dreaded gratuities (a crazy way of paying anybody for anything). One of the passengers, who had a flight booked from Lisbon, did not appear to appreciate that he was disembarking in Porto, did not have any arrangements to get to Lisbon and expected Viking to organise his transfer.