Săruleştii de Jos

Today I have a tour with a local guide Alina and driver, Gabriel. Alina speaks very good English, Gabriel can only say "thankyou very much". We drive a modern comfortable Skoda.

We leave at 8am and drive through agricultural land for 2 1/2 hours to the city of Constanta and the Black Sea at Mamaia Beach.
It looks like most of the harvest has been done and there's heaps of tractors out ploughing today.

I have a wade in the Black Sea and collect a few shells.
We then go to the Old City where I have spare time on my own to explore. I have about 2 hours so have a look about.
I have lunch at a burger place and they have an Australian Burger on the menu! The young waiter tries to talk to me about coming to Australia to work but we have to talk via Google Translator, his English is very poor and my Romanian is zilch. Nice chat.

Both museums are shut on Tuesdays.
I climb the minaret at the mosque and get a great view but have jelly legs for a while so I'm glad I did that last!

We all get back in the car and drive 2 1/2 hours back. We drove at an average of 135 km/hr, sometimes getting up to 170! So, if we drove at our usual speed it would've taken longer.... obviously.

Along the way Alina told me a lot of the history which I'll talk about later.

Basically the Greeks discovered the Black Sea first and named the sea Black as it wasn't as clear as their seas. Then the Romans came, the Ottomans, the Monarchy, the Communists.

It was a good day and a good local guide company. They don't usually do tours on a Tuesday but because it's the shoulder season she decided she'd do it for me.Read more