Romania

We spent two short days in romania. The first was in brasov which is a smaller town but has more of the medieval type structures you think of when you conjure images of romania. we weren't too enchanted with it at first (lots and lots of poverty) until we found its charming little town square area. there were lots of shops and restaurants as well as little old ladies selling traditional romanian crafts. we spend most of our time in this square walking the streets and seeing ice cream stand after ice cream stand. apparently they love their ice cream! and then we realized how cheap it was!! about .40 cents (american) and then the trouble began --- we had three ice cream comes in one day!! two of them were literally back to back (we couldn't decide if we wanted hand dipped or soft serve... so we settled on both!) and the third cone was a double scoop for each of us. by the end of the day we felt sick and vowed to stick to a one ice cream a day minimum from there on out.

on to bucharest and there was a lot of the things we didnt like about brasov and even more of it. the train station (much like in brasov) is full of homeless children - with no parents to be found- begging and begging, very persistently, for money. most seemed around 7-9 years old, but some were as young as maybe 4. its very, very sad and hard to see.

we flew out of bucharest to athens on the 9th (our plane leaving at a very unpleasant 5am!).