Review

We're back from skiiiiiing!  It was great!  More of that later.

Don't ever travel to the continent by driving to Folkestone and then driving onto a train and then driving off the train at Calais.  More of that later.

Think twice before using Crystal for skiiiiiiing holidays, especially if you need a rep while at your chosen resort.  More of that later.

Don't ever travel back from the continent by driving to Calais and then driving onto a train and then driving off the train at Folkestone.  More of that later.

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I've just returned from three days of business in Bucharest, capital of Romania. The guide book I bought at Heathrow on the way out called it Europe's most unappealing capital which seemed a bit harsh, so here is my all-in-one self-written travel guide and totally balanced review of the place...

Name

When I was about six years old I would have found it amusing to think up a reason for why Bucharest is called Bucharest. I suspect I would have come up with something a bit rubbish such as there being a man called Bucha who was walking along and he got tired so he stopped for a rest and where he stopped a city eventually grew up and so they called it Bucha rest. Pathetic, right? But not actually because in my official guide book it says according to legend, Bucharest was founded by a shepherd called Bucur, who set down to rest somewhere close to Piata Obor in the 12^th century, liked the look of the place and created a city so actually my rubbish story is pretty much spot on. Though I've no idea how a shepherd can just create a city on a whim.

Getting there

A three hour hell flight with a bloke with rampant Ebola sat next to me and a bloke who seemed to think reclining his seat to full extent was obligatory in front.

Getting from the Airport to the city centre

Beware of the taxi touts in the airport foyer who won't even wait for the previous tout to stop talking at you before offering you a cheap taxi with receipt provided. The best thing to do is ignore these people and catch the 783 Airport Express bus which costs 5 lei return (about £1.30). The bus is quite uncomfortable, and hot, but mercifully the journey is only 17km so not too far. Not so mercifully the 17km actually takes two and a half hours because of the traffic and roadworks and jams and traffic. And traffic. This is a good point to cover driving in Bucharest...

Driving in Bucharest

Drivers need to be aware of the Bucharest highway code which in its entirety is:

Rule 1: Always try and drive faster than everyone else.

Rule 2: Traffic lights? What are they for then?

Rule 3: Blurt your horn every five metres of travel.

Rule 4: Pavements have two purposes: i) Parking on. ii) Using as an extra traffic lane.

Anyway, when the bus eventually dropped me off I had to find my hotel. Fortunately for the casual traveller, none of the side roads are labelled with their names so I got to view thousands and thousands of small back streets as I wandered around aimlessly lost for an hour and a half. In the end, enough was enough and I decided to resort to the thing all rational fellows hate most. I decided to ask someone for directions.

This clearly needed a careful strategy. I needed to pick my target carefully. Which of these people in this road looked most likely to be helpful? Who might know a bit more English than I know Romanian? I picked an old man at random and started my assault.

“Excuse me sir, but could you tell me where this hotel is please?” I asked, waving my hotel booking confirmation in his face.

“You speak German?” he replied, in English. That was weird. If he thought I was German (no surprise – for some reason Claire and I always get mistaken for Germans when we are on holiday) then why did he ask me in English if I could speak German? I assumed it was because his German language skills were better than his English.

“Nein” I replied, “Mais je parle Francais un peu”, trying to be helpful.

“Ah oui!, Francais!” he said in French, before then reverting to English to say “your hotel is over there” and he pointed to my hotel which was just over there on the other side of the road all along.

Hotels

My hotel was a four star one. That's dead posh in England, where the stars stop at five but I think they must go up to about 28 in Bucharest. To be fair, the hotel did lay on some good facilities:

• Plywood walls to all rooms so that you can conveniently hear your neighbours every action down to individual stomach rumbles.
• A card key system that resets itself every time you leave your room, locking you out and giving you ample exercise opportunity trudging up and down the three flights of stairs to reception to get them to reset it.
• No tea and coffee facilities so you can avoid all that unpleasant caffeine.
• No internet access to distract you from the Romanian television of an evening.

It was also conveniently placed on this delightful road:

Local Wildlife

According to official estimates there are some 75 thousand stray dogs in Bucharest, with around 50 bites to people per day.

You can hear the dogs barking and howling all night. The locals refuse to allow a cull which seems strange as they have a history of culling humans. Interestingly there is less dog poo on the pavements than there is in London.

I also saw one pussy cat.

Local transport

Options for transport for getting around town are multitudinous. My extensive research found:

• Taxi. Yellow and everywhere. Using them means sitting in a car with a nutter who follows the Bucharest highway code to the letter.
• Metro. I saw a few underground stations but was too scared to go down any.

• Tram. There are a few around and they seem to be extending the system.

• Bus. No bus stops are labelled so I have no idea where people get on and off. They seem to be eternally stuck in traffic jams, not having the smallness to escape by going round on the pavement as the rest of the traffic can.

• Bicycle. I saw lots and lots and lots of well-built cycle lanes, but not a single bike. This is a city where the car rules over all.

• Walking. My chosen mode of transport. Watch out for holes - this one was about four metres deep, but as you can see it's perfectly safe because they've put a solid protection barrier up to stop people tumbling in.

 

Also watch out for dogs, cars, other people, leafleters, police and beggars. Be careful when crossing the road as the traffic lane to pedestrian crossing ratio is very large. I had to get across this seven lane beauty unaided:

Beggars

All along the main street you can find beggars sat there with various ailments on show. One lady had openly weeping sores on her legs. A chap had a foot missing and had carefully rolled up his trouser leg to provide a good view to all the passers by. Further on there was a more elderly lady with both arms amputated above the elbow, waving her stumps around as if to make a point. I saw one tourist put a 5 lei note on her lap which seemed a bit cruel because it must surely blow away without being picked up. All very depressing.

Architecture

Mixed. There is some interesting art deco stuff

 

mixed with a whole load of concrete flats which were put up quickly in the communist regime to house people fast.

Everything is made that much more attractive by being covered in graffiti and/or Pepsi adverts.

There are also some absolutely enormous palace-like government buildings everywhere which were, I think, built under the Ceausescu regime, presumably so he could show off about how powerful and well endowed he was.  This one was completed just after he was executed, and is allegedly the second largest building on earth, after the Pentagon.  It's over 100m tall and has four stories underground.

Things to do in Bucharest

Nothing.

Shopping

I didn't do any but I did go into two shops.

The first was an electrical superstore, because I wanted to buy a network cable to see if the broken socket marked “data” in my hotel room would actually provide me with an internet link. The electrical shop was guarded at the door by two big blokes with SWAT written on their bullet-proof jackets. I got past them without being shot too much, and searched the shop for a cable, which I didn't find so I left again.

The second was a Carrefour supermarket because I fancied some snacks. A security guard accosted me on the way in and forced me to hand over my backpack to a lady who heat-sealed it in polythene before I was allowed further in. Having done that I watched the queue of people at the fresh fruit and veg stand for a bit before failing to find any suitable snacks and leaving. I had to unwrap my bag.

Useful advice for people intending travelling to Bucharest

Don't.

So today I woke up nice and early and drove a now-feeling-boring car to somewhere near Winchester where I got to drive three different not-at-all-boring TANKS!  The biggest, a Chieftain, weighed in at 65 tonnes!  But more of that when I upload some piccys later on.  Brrrrrrmmrmmmmrmmm!

This afternoon we went to the library and Sam picked some childrens books to borrow. One of them is particularly good and I reckon anyone who likes science and has kids should read it to them.  It's called Science Verse, written by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, and is a book of poems in the style of famous poems but all about science, for example

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.  Jack jump over the combustion reaction of O₂ + heat + fuel to form CO₂ + light + heat + exhaust.

Brilliant!

We found ourselves in Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth today at lunchtime and decided to treat ourselves to lunch out. The whole place was heaving with people but eventually we managed to find a restaurant with some spare capacity - it was an Italian place called "Azzurro".

It started off well enough - quick service and the waitress gave Sam a childrens menu that had colouring-in and other activities to do on it. Then it all turned rather surreal.

The waitress brought Sam a paper cup full of broken crayons so he could colour in the picture. After he had fumbled around in the cup reaching for the crayons Claire suddenly realised that as well as the crayons the cup also contained a whole heap of broken glass, each part of which was easily sharp enough to lacerate small hands. We complained strongly and the waitress was very apologetic and took the cup of crayons away to extract the glass.

She returned with it in due course and it still contained five or six pieces of glass. Claire ended up tipping all the crayons out and removing the dangerous parts herself. At this point a waiter came over with our drinks and Claire gave him the remaining pieces of broken glass. He could not have been more indifferent about it.

The food eventually turned up and was Ok but nothing spectacular. A waitress came round offering sprinkled parmesan on our pasta and before Sam had a chance to say "No thank you" she'd smothered his food in it. She definitely gave off an air of impatience. They also managed to get our drink order wrong.

When the bill came there was an item on the bottom labelled 'Optional Service Charge @10%' and this amount had been added before the bottom line. It seemed a bit cheeky to me to add an optional charge to the total so I mumbled to myself about how bad this place was and that we wouldn't come back.

The waitress came over to take my credit card and asked me whether I was happy to pay the optional service charge. "Yes, of course!" I replied. Why are us Brits so rubbish at complaining?

Overall score: Minus several million out of ten. Avoid.