It occurred to me recently that the lyrics from The Rocky Horror Picture Show were applicable... ‘with a bit of a mind flip, you’re into the time slip’ and before I knew it a month had slipped away - and we’re off to Spain tomorrow! So here goes...

It’s probably not officially summer in Bucharest yet, in fact to speak to the locals this very hot weather is highly unseasonable indeed this early in the year. But the global warming / extreme weather has just kept on coming. With highs up to 33 degrees and 20 degrees now defined as a pleasantly cool day - it’s certainly felt like summer to us.

We have become positively Bucharestian and ventured to the shade and waterways of the large city parks - just us and every resident of Bucharest it sometimes seems. Admittedly, we visited Cismisgu Park with it’s lake, rowboats and black swans on 1 May - or May Day as it is celebrated all across Europe. We’d missed the tulips by a whisker and they were dying away with the heat, but it was a great walk from home, to and through the park and we popped out at the far end and meandered home downhill along Calea Victoriei.

We’ve been hammering away at our ‘walking for fitness’ regime (if nothing else, the free Qantas points through their Assure app have been welcome). Wednesday 2 May was the first Wednesday of the month and so, Free Art Day at Romania’s art museums/galleries. We visited both the Art Collections and the National Art Museum last year, but it was great to return and see even more of the exhibits. James did a bit of research into the origins of the Art Collections museum. It’s in a beautiful building - the Casa or Palace Romanit which was built as a private residence in 1822. The state bought it in 1883 for use at the country’s supreme court. After the communist regime came to power in the 1940s it ended up being a dumping ground for the art collections of wealthy elites who were no longer allowed to be wealthy, or for that matter, elite. Whilst many of the collections on display were in fact donated to the state from the 1920s onwards, it’s bittersweet to think the basement is full of art - uninventoried and unappreciated. Long shadows indeed. We had lunch in the city between gallery visits and even fitted in a massive evening walk - rather incredibly, 18,000+ steps and over 10 km of zipping (traipsing?) around the city in one day.

Not every day can be a marathon of course - the following day 4 km was our limit - just a jaunt to the supermarket and a stroll down the boulevard in the cool of the evening.

Our adventures are usually planned with a bit of purpose - doesn’t have to be a lot. Our inaugural trip on Bucharest’s metro was to reach the Apple Store that we found on Google Maps. Did seem a bit odd that it wasn’t in the city centre - but hey - maybe it’s a massive satellite suburb with a huge shopping centre. Or maybe as it turned out, it’s just an Apple reseller, with very little stock and no service department. Ah well... looks like it will be Spain before my cracked iPad gets a facelift. It was however a good chance to nip into a secondhand shop for a pair of linen summer trousers... All the walking is proving hard on my current collection - so I will continue to kill them off and leave three pairs of tattered and torn behind and depart Romania in my ‘new to me’ summer pants.

We’ve enjoyed several long walks along the river in the evening and it really brings Bucharest’s gigantic proportions into focus (the sunset is along the river with the Palace of Parliament in the far distance). A block can take 15 minutes to walk - and if you catch the traffic lights wrong, then crossing the Bucharestian Champs Élysées can add another 10 minutes at least. Another day, for something different, we decided to have a stroll around the remnants of the once thriving Jewish quarter. All a bit depressing really as it was a very, very hot, dry and windy day and there were many vacant sections that were veritable dust bowls. It’s lucky we had a rest day after the Jewish quarter walk as it was really more just a pause en route to our next park outing. This time we took the metro to Herestrau park, explored this massive green area and then hiked all the way home via Bucharest’s Arc de Triumph, all the way down Calea Victoriei and into the city. We were seriously dragging the chain by the time we reached home and didn’t even bother with an evening walk.

One of the reasons we are doing a lot of walking and exploring is of course to be conditioned for the warmth of a southern Spanish summer (in fact it’s actually cooler there at the moment). The other is because we have the time to do it - since we spend very little time preparing meals at the moment. Our apartment is wonderfully located next to the river and the old town and just 30 minutes walk along the river to the National Opera House for our culture tripping. At the base of our block is an amazing Turkish eatery that we have visited too many times to count. Selale (Turkish for waterfall) has the kebab option of course, but what sets this place apart is their extensive variety of rich, flavoursome casseroles and stews as well moussaka and grills just to name a few. The ‘side’ dish options such as bulghur wheat, rice, Israeli cous cous, mash and polenta round out the offerings We’ve purchased around 50 meals so far and have not been disappointed once. Price for a hot meal and side dish is 11 lei - less than €3 and this includes a freshly baked pita pocket style Turkish bread. And one meal feeds both of us! We usually nip down about 10.30 am every few days and stock up multiple meals to save us cooking (and shopping, carrying, preparing and cleaning up). Our apartment does have a little kitchenette - but a postage stamp has more bench space - so we use Selale and the microwave a lot!

Now walking for health and fitness is not going to have us in the Olympics any time soon - but we both whole heartedly subscribe to two dictums - ‘Everything in Moderation’ and ‘Use it or Lose it’. Occasionally things happen when you’re on the road long term and we pretty much write them off to LTTV (‘long term travel virus’ - the acronym invented by us... but sure this phenomena exists). So after all these massive walk-fests, when I was scratching my ankles and developed a 2 inch band of rash around both ankles overnight - burning, itching and carrying on... figured it was dodgy grass/new washing powder/razor rash or, just LTTV. It took about 10 days to resolve (that’s medical speak for ‘went away by itself, eventually’). About 2 days after that I was down a newspaper rabbit hole and found an article in Forbes magazine about a much suffered but little researched condition known variously as Disney Rash / Epcot Rash or, my favourite, Golfer’s Vasculitis. Likely to hit older people, more so women than men and once you’ve had it once, will probably happen again. Yay me. Treatment? Put your feet up and avoid the heat... OK well that explains why it hung around so long last time. Live and learn.

It takes more than burning ankles to slow us down, and by mid May we were in culture mode again with an astounding performance of the ballet Sleeping Beauty on the 13th (traditional, lavish, costumes, drama - amazing - a fairytale sprung to life) and Aida on the 17th. Ballet has become our new passion it seems, but the Aida opera was mind-blowing. Obviously Italian with surtitles in Romanian means we do devour the Wiki synopsis just before we leave for the show - and it was a huge production - people are relatively cheap here... so between the full orchestra and the entire stage being covered in the singing cast, there wasn’t a spare scrap of space to be seen. Only slight downside to Aida was as I was coming down the stairs to the front row of the balcony, I sort of missed the last one (was a bit gloomy light wise) - I managed to grab the rail and save myself the indignity of landing in a heap) - but youchy - 3 hours is a long while when you’re in tip top condition - it’s a lifetime with wrenched bits.

But that’s OK - because the next day we trotted (limped, grumped and carried on) down to the local pharmacy. It seems, as in Australia, the big names have their greedy mitts firmly clenched around the throats of the local pharmacies. We asked for ibuprofen and were immediately directed to the glossy, expensive, eye level display of every stripe of Nurofen available - all on display behind the counter. We didn’t even look at the prices because we know that ‘Nurofen’ is code for ‘hideously overpriced ibuprofen in lots of pretty and differently labelled boxes’. The look we got we we asked for a generic ibuprofen could easily have been used for a gentleman of advanced years and low morals in a filthy raincoat asking for the brightly coloured sweets. In any event she eventually opened a drawer under the counter and produced five different non-Nurofen boxes of ibuprofen. It was very much ‘don’t ask / don’t get’. That’s OK. Asking is a skill and we’re very good at it. Quite a few pills later I was in more or less tip-top condition and Saturday 19 May saw me grumbling my way out of the apartment for an annual European tradition.

Once a year it is Night at the Museums - In Romania this involves all the state museums and many private museums opening their doors to the public for free from about 5 pm until at least midnight (in some cases until 4 am!) Often concerts and other events are performed throughout the evening. We took the metro out to Piata Victoriei and had hoped to visit the Natural History museum as it’s one of the more expensive - but the movie ‘Night at the Museum’ has a lot to answer for and the crowds were massive - hundreds? thousands? Too many for us anyway. Our next preference didn’t even have a queue so it was a short stroll to the National Geology Museum which had a cracking array of crystals on show - or ‘flowers of the earth’ as they poetically describe them. From there we jumped on the metro back to the Sutu Palace with the history of Bucharest on display and luxurious interiors. Lucky we arrived relatively early in the night as the crowds had caught up with us by the time we left. We finalised the evening with a visit to the private Kitsch Museum - bad taste in all its glory and actually quite fun - don’t know if it was worth the usual price of 8 euro each... but definitely worth ‘free’!

Amongst all our other goings on, I had a birthday (which was more or less cancelled from lack of interest on my part... planning to have a posh seafood fiesta at a beach restaurant in Spain instead!) We’ve been out roaming the streets, exploring the old town when the urge strikes and even saw another opera on 27 May. Theoretically it was the duo Cav & Pag... but we were both a bit fatigued (not the original word) and it was very hot in the opera house and whilst no doubt a cracking performance of Cavalleria Rusticana, it was ruined by 30 minutes of speechifying at the beginning honouring an icon of the Romanian opera scene. She was undoubtedly a lovely lady and also made a nice speech - but we’re sure the fellow who introduced her read out every single performance she’d ever been in worldwide. And every bus she’d ever taken and every meal she ever ate... ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Suffice it to say we left at the intermission and missed the performance of Pagliacci. Only in Bucharest can you leave at half time and not feel guilty due to money misspent.

Our final week was only mildly interesting (even to us), as it turned out Monday was a public holiday. So many days after Easter or something similar and Friday was too... Youth Day? Who knows. But it’s been a way to focus our minds on packing (aaargh... packing), when once more all our worldly goods had to shrink in a reverse-big-bang type way, back into the bags. Town has seemed relatively quiet and we suspect quite a few people ‘made the sandwich’ - which we think is a charming way of describing bridging the gap with a few days annual leave to allow 9 days off.

We find as we gallivant about that everywhere we go has something special (sometimes many special things - Paris... Amsterdam..., we looking at you). Ireland has a special place in our hearts - having travelled all over it and returned again and again we know we’ll always enjoy it. Spain - the markets, fairs, beaches and food (we’ll be seeing you soon). When it comes to Eastern Europe, Bucharest with its Roman heritage is undoubtedly our favourite - most especially because we can go culture-crazy for weeks on end at ridiculously low prices. We attended our last extravaganza on Wednesday night, 30 May and saw a stunning performance of the ballet Romeo & Juliet. With a modern twist, lavish ballroom scenes, Italian designed lighting and staging - all we can say is WOW! Really went out on a high. Now if we could just get that theme out of our heads. The last six weeks have been a culture-trip to remember and will keep us going until the end of the year at least.

We’re now ensconced in a airport hotel we discovered last year and enjoying our last Romanian day and night in an international hotel bubble - It will be a painfully early start tomorrow to get to our 7 am flight to Spain... but 1000% better than making the early start from in the city. Farewell Bucharest, until we meet again.