One of Craiova’s charms are all of its parks and gardens. While Marina had a busy day on Tuesday, teaching and taking her Romanian class, we explored Nicolae Romanescu Park, one of the largest urban parks in Eastern Europe.
The park is bordered by cemetaries and also houses the zoo. It is also home to a rather terrifying number of birds, primarily Eurasian jackdaws.
Other highlights are a castle and a large pond, with a charming but oddly-placed guitar in it, crossed by a beautiful bridge.
And for some reason a flower carriage.
Parking in Craiova is limited, and they deal with it by just parking on the sidewalk. Despite this, Craiova is a very walkable city.
That night, we had one of the finest meals of our travels at traditional Romanian restaurant Casa Ghincea. We had soups, polenta, stuffed cabbage, pickles and a giant pile of meat. When we tried to order more, the waiter said, “No, that’s enough,” took our menus and walked away. He was right! A Romani band played througout the night, including an instrument that was new to us, a cimbalom (here’s an example). Marina explained to us that a remaining effect of living under the Ceaușescu regime is that older people do not like having their pictures taken by strangers, having experienced so much surveillance, so we tried to be respectful.
The next day, after Marina had Romanian class (Wednesday is a light day for her) and Russell wrote in the morning, we met up to go to the Botanical Gardens. The weather was gorgeous and it was lovely to see the park packed with folks enjoying a beautiful fall day.
We think this is a mandarin duck and we’re not sure why it is here.
The park had a wide variety of planted areas. Being fall, there weren’t many flowers, but plenty to see.
Some of the sculptures are a little scary. We don’t think these had anything to do with Halloween.
After the garden, we relaxed at Marina’s for a bit and then went to dinner at a Greek restaurant. We were excited to go to Transylvania the next day!
Russell hit a bit of a setback with his book-writing during the week, though it’s one of those frog-in-a-well situations, where the steps backward will lead to a better result in the end. It has been a bit of an struggle to come to terms with the fact that the ms won’t be complete by the end of the trip. But there’s good progress and plenty of time to finish once we get home.
Emily and Russell's Travel Blog 