Tuesday, May 31, 2016 in Romania

Tuesday. We love sleeping in on vacation. Only we woke up at 3 am today! Once we got back to sleep, it was nice sleeping in. Our room is quiet and comfortable, though small.

Our messy room.

For  breakfast, I walked two doors down to what is called a "magazine" (tiny market) and got some pastries, some chocolate milk and some yogurt for our breakfast. We already had an apple and an orange from our hotel "free" stuff on our floor, but that fruit is getting so old! ugh.

Mike needed some time to rest his tired out knees and feet, so I went walking. I headed to the botanical garden, but first I walked the entire perimeter around many blocks and saw quite the variety of homes and construction in various forms of completion. Then I went into the Botanical Garden , enjoyed the rose garden and some lovely trees and meadows, a creek,  bridges, Japanese koi ponds. Most signage was in Romanian, so I just enjoyed looking and smelling.  Some of the plant and tree identification used the Latin genus and species terms, so it was familiar to me in some respects. I did not have my camera with me, but I did receive a nice hardbound book on the Botanical Garden from the Erasmus+ Team as a gift. (It added significantly to the weight of our luggage.)
image courtesy of Babes-Bolyai University

I went back to get Mike and we walked to a museum of Transylvanian Ethnography, but it was mostly a big Lego festival( or "Special Exhibit").  There were some Romanian artifacts that were interesting, but it was hardly worth the price of admission.  I heard later that there is also an outdoor part of that museum out of the city limits that includes housing replicas.  But we never had the opportunity to visit that.

We ate lunch at a sidewalk cafe. Our first food excursion on our own in a real restaurant place! It was good and I guess we did okay. 

Sidewalk cafe lunch experience

Napkins, salt and pepper--always, ALWAYS on the tables (and ashtrays).

Then we found Hotel Transylvania and took a picture outside and bought some ice cream from the inside courtyard ice cream vendor.

In front of Hotel Transylvania

 Walked back to our hotel after trying to find the fruit stand we'd seen the previous day. They had yummy-looking cherries! But this day, the quality was less, or we just couldn't decide if the price was best, or the stand was busy and intimidating to us...I don't recall just why we did not get any this time. We DID buy an umbreĺla and we needed it on the way home.

Such contrast. Ultra modern glass Bank of Transylvania building right next to old, old church.

 
It was time for my 3 p.m. meeting, so I took off in the  drizzling rain. I met with Dr. Delia Balas, a Dr. Andreas Mogos, and Bogdanà Neatmu, all members of the faculty in the Faculties of Political, Administrative, and  Communication Sciences. Delightful ladies. Good information about program and where they want to see it go in the future. After meeting them in one office, we walked around the corner to another office/campus building, and this one housed the library for those departments. They rushed off to other appointments and left me to explore the little library. Didn't have my camera with me. But when it was time to leave, I thought I knew where I was. Obviously, I didn't!

I got Very VERY lost in the way home. My 30 min walk took an hour and it was raining nearly the whole time. I was a little nervous. I eventually found a landmark and headed in the right direction. I stopped to walk into a Greek Orthodox Church and tried to peek inside the Opera House, but the doors were locked.

This statue has a man on top, but the bottom is three ladies blowing horns. They have large sleeves. My tour guide told me that folks in town are not too fond of this statue for some reason. I would have never known it was women blowing their horns to the sky had she not told me.  In the back ground is the yellow building/Opera house. THAT was my landmark that helped me find my way back!

 When I finally DID make it back to the hotel, Mike and I cleaned up and went to eat at Marty's Restaurant. GREAT food.  I ate way too  much, but I did walk a whole lot today.😕

Uneven sidewalks (on the way to our restaurant) like this one made us have a great appreciation for the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Dinner at Marty's. The hotel gets us a discount here. Lovely, upper floor, no A/C, hot.

The lemonade was great and the food yummy!

Doors that look like cats!

We never did find out what this metal thing in the sidewalk was.

 
That evening, I did some laundry in the shower while I cleaned all the sweat off me. It actually works out better to do than than to wash things out in the sink. Only it can be a little wasteful with the water since the shower is running longer.

Typical 'grass' in the park. Cute flowers, but a lot of dirt and weeds, too.