Sunday    3.8.2025
476km Total: 2288km  6h 02m Total: 28h 43m
  9.63km Total: 18.43km

I never thought I would be so happy to see an old-fashioned two-lane motorway, but it was with a broad smile on my face that I got on the E81 and accelerated to 130km/h.
Not particularly inspiring riding, but it covers the miles, just over 200 before I stop for some refreshments for both the bike and myself.

The weather is glorious and the temperature is a very pleasant 20°C (68ºF) to start with.
However, the mercury rises gradually until it reaches 33°C (91ºF) in the early afternoon.

The best ride of the day had no real competition, as pretty much everything else was motorway, but the DN7 through Cozia National Park was great riding, albeit with the usual traffic, which was probably made worse by it being Sunday and people having the day off.
Basically, apart from the few motorways, the entire Romanian road network is one single country wide traffic jam.

I am completely drenched in sweat when I roll up to the hotel at half past four in the afternoon.
I have driven some 2300 kilometres in four days and today I have probably sweated several litres.
There is no doubt that I am exhausted, but I am completely convinced that if I had not had a break from driving for a couple of years due to buying a house, I would have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown after this.

I now realise that I simply became spoiled by being able to go on long trips for several weeks every year.
This feels like a real new beginning.
I am tired, of course, but I am also really excited, happy and grateful.

I freshen up a bit and head for the most obvious tourist destination within walking distance, the old town.
To be honest, it was a little difficult to appreciate any of the old architecture in the area, as all of it is basically one big tourist trap.
Restaurants, ice cream parlours, etc. line virtually every street.
I don't dismiss it as a tourist destination for pure people watching, but it is probably the most exploited old town I've ever been to.

I wander around pretty aimlessly, find a couple of churches that are closed, before venturing into the tourist chaos for some supper.
I settle on a place called Xclusive and order some kind of mixed grill with chicken.
They had two waiters who clearly did not communicate with each other at all, even though they were covering the same area.

I sit and scroll on my mobile and at first don't notice that the food never seemed to arrive, but eventually (after almost an hour) it becomes obvious that the place is so exclusive that they have completely forgotten my order.

One of the idiots apologises and says that the kitchen is cooking the food now and that it will only take a few minutes.
(That is, if 30 minutes is a few.)
The only advantage of it taking an hour and a half for my food to arrive was that two gentlemen from Malta at the next table over took pity on me partway through the first hour and started chatting to me and they were nice people.

The best part?
When the food finally arrived, it wasn't even the food I'd ordered.
It was mixed grill with lamb and not chicken, but at that point I was so hungry I'd probably have eaten the charcoal, so I didn't care.
After such terrible service, I almost wish I could say that the food was rubbish too, but that would be a lie; it was actually really good.

A clear sign of how dissatisfied I was was is that I did NOT have a pint of Guinness for dessert, even though they served it.
However, to be perfectly honest, that decision was made all the easier because I already knew there was an Irish pub just around the corner.

It had been a long day in the saddle, so I didn't hang around at the pub for long before stumbling back to the hotel.

An evening walk in Bucharest

Monday    4.8.2025 
16.44km Total: 34.87km 

It is evident that I have gone up a few classes in hotels as the breakfast buffet significantly surpassed the previous options.

I head straight for my top tourist destination, Ceaușescu's palace.
Google Maps does its very best to get me arrested, as its view was that tourists should enter the palace via the same entrance as members of parliament.
The gendarmes strongly disagreed.

After receiving somewhat better instructions from a very helpful gendarme, I trudge on only to end up at the National Museum of Art instead.
The prospect of having to walk all the way around one of the world's largest buildings in the scorching sun is a little daunting, but on the way back to the main road, I see an open entrance that at least doesn't have a gendarme outside.

It was only once inside that I saw a sign saying ‘Tourists’, so it was quite unnecessarily anonymous.
However, I am told that I have to wait until the next full hour (1 p.m.) for the next guided tour, which is a 50-minute wait, but there is seating in the shade, so there's no way I'm going to miss this for something like that.

Once inside the palace, the wow factor is absolutely overwhelming.
It's a complete orgy of marble and crystal chandeliers.

The most astonishing facts that emerged during the tour:

• It is not the world's largest administrative building, as the Pentagon is larger, but it is the heaviest in all categories due to all the marble.

• The building weighs 4.1 million (metric) tonnes and because of that sinks 6 mm each year.

• Nearly 500 crystal chandeliers contain 3.5 tonnes of crystal, and even though they have switched to low-energy light bulbs, if all the lights in the palace are switched on at the same time, it would consume as much electricity as 25% of the rest of Bucharest combined.

• The utilities bill is equivalent to just over one million euros per month.

• Despite the fact that large parts of the state apparatus have been squeezed into the building, 70% of it still stands empty.

This immense, ostentatious building was constructed by the dictator Ceaușescu at a time when large parts of the population were starving, as the country essentially exported all its high-quality foodstuffs to bring money into the state coffers, and he still chose to call it the ‘people's’ palace.

As I see it, there are two options here.
Either he was more evil than the devil himself, or he was so completely out of touch with reality that Marie Antoinette seems like a real proletarian by comparison.

The tour lasted an hour, during which time we saw only 5% of the building.
They are so desperate to cover their operating costs that they basically rent out a conference room to anyone who is willing to pay.

I eat a kebab at a nearby restaurant for lunch and try to drink as much liquid as possible.
The temperature is now up to 36°C (97ºF).

I therefore take refuge in the Communist Museum in the old town.
One of the more bizarre things that emerged there was that the communist regime wanted to keep the number of cars on the streets down and therefore introduced a fortnightly system where those with an odd number on their registration plate were allowed to drive one week and an even numbers the next.
Predictably, this led to the more creative members of the population simply keeping two sets of number plates, which they changed around as needed.
Another gem was that during the rise of decadent rock music in Europe, the equivalent in Romania was called electric guitar bands.
It was not explicitly forbidden to play rock music, but lyrics and stage costumes were carefully scrutinised by the Securitate, and musicians who aspired to the rock n' roll lifestyle had to wear hats in public to avoid the risk of having their hair forcibly cut.

After this, I set off for the Patriarchal Cathedral.
Just like Russia's Orthodox churches, it is beautiful on the outside but very dark on the inside, with an abundance of gold leaf.
A mass was in progress inside, so I hadn't really planned to go in, but I was more or less ushered in by a guard.

I don't get to see much more during the afternoon as I foolishly forgot my medicine at the hotel, and once there, it didn't really feel that appealing to explore more while the sun is still scorching.
So I take a little siesta before returning to the anthill that is the old town.

However, I feel that I have favoured the tourist traps there a little too much so far, so I seek out a place a little further away and sit down at the al fresco area of a Thai restaurant.
It wasn't exactly cheap either (equivalent to €18), but it was definitely cheaper than my previous meals.
But on that account I have only myself to blame really.
I am convinced that you can do Bucharest much more cheaply if you are a bit less lazy, but in the touristy areas, Bucharest is far from the budget destination that my preconceptions led me to believe.

Since I need to check in ridiculously early for the boat from Varna to Batumi, I have booked an overnight stay in Varna.
It's ‘only’ 300 kilometres, so it will be a short day's journey for a change, and theoretically I could have left very early and stayed here another night, but I don't have much confidence in the effectiveness of either Romanian or Bulgarian infrastructure.

As there was a bit of a shortage of accommodation with decent parking in Varna, I have booked my next night at a Black Sea resort.
Sometimes one has to make the tough decisions. 😎

'Peoples' Palace

The communist museum

The Patriarchal Cathedral

Tuesday    5.8.2025
283km Total: 2571km  4h 18m Total: 33h 01m
  1.96km Total: 36.83km

I think it took two hours to drive the first 70 kilometres, partly because there was a kilometre-long queue just a few hundred metres before the Bulgarian border.
It's unclear why, since Bulgaria, like Romania, has fully joined the Schengen area, making it extremely easy to travel between countries on this trip compared to previous visits in this region.
As I stand there surrounded by cars with their engines running, the thermometer on my bike slowly rises to 42.5°C (108.5ºF).

After a while, a man comes walking up and questions why on earth I'm still standing in the queue when I could just ride between the other vehicles, which is what he himself had done as a motorcyclist for twenty years.
I had already realised long ago that this was completely impossible, so I suggested that he take a look at the back of the bike and then down the road and see how well he thought it would actually work.
(It would have come to a halt after just one car, and the rest of the road was completely jammed with vehicles.)
I think he actually thought he was being helpful, but his attitude and tone made it sound more like hostility.

It does become a much sought after motorway which quite excitingly had a speed limit of 140 km/h.
Exciting because the condition of the motorway was so poor at times that there was probably a real risk of a short flight following some of the bumps and potholes if one was to actually drive/ride that speed.
Even though motorcycles are exempt, a vignette is required to drive in Bulgaria, but obviously the revenue from this does not cover the actual need for road maintenance.

When I park in the hotel car park, I am greeted by a member of staff/janitor who sees the Swedish number plate and exclaims Hyvää!
I mean, it's Finnish but fair play to him, it's hardly as if the average Swede would know the difference between, say, Romanian and Bulgarian, so I was duly impressed.
After the Finnish greeting, he asks me to park the bike in a way that doesn't take up a car space.
Under the premise that it is sometimes better to ask for forgiveness than permission, I took that as an invitation to park the bike right next to the hotel entrance.
There was definitely no room for a car to park there.
Even though I think I drinking like a bloody camel, I still have some problems replacing all I'm sweating out, which has quite literally gone to my head, so it's a very quiet afternoon with the evening spent at the hotel pool.

Luckily, the hotel has its own restaurant, because it definitely felt like I had travelled a long way from the main drag but I was quite happy where I was.

Was this what he meant? Most likely, no.
Will a car fit? Also, no.