{"id":605,"date":"2015-05-07T21:12:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T20:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=605"},"modified":"2015-05-07T21:12:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T20:12:44","slug":"thursday-constanta-romania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/thursday-constanta-romania\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday – Constanta, Romania"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived at Constanta in Romania. Having no escorting duties and a whole day to ourselves (bliss), we decided to have a leisurely trip into the town by shuttle bus – see what’s occurring, then make our way back to the ship on foot.<\/p>\n

Constanta as a whole is quite vast; it stretches out, around a large bay, to a modern city with high-rise apartments and office blocks. In comparison; the Old Town isn’t very big at all. It has a central square with a handful of small cafes and bars, off which there is a large archeological museum and several old churches of varying denominations and a mosque. Alongside the Archaeological Museum are the remains of a large Roman Mosaic, housed in its very own protective building. We paid a small fee to view it (and were duly impressed), then spent some time sat outside a small coffee shop supping coffee and beer and using their free wi-fi (we sat outside, by the way, because the inside was full of people smoking… how we’ve come accustomed to smoke-free environments…).<\/p>\n

One thing that caught my attention, and I thought was quite distinctive, was how many of the street names, mounted on ornate wrought-iron posts, were hand-painted.<\/p>\n

\"Constanta_01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We headed towards the beach, but discovered the beach is a hard-hat work-in-progress area; no swimmers and sun-loungers – just a lot of diggers and site huts; it’ll be nice when it’s finished, though.<\/p>\n

\"Constanta_02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For a small fee, we were able to climb the inside of a minarette in the mosque, to enjoy panoramic views of the town below us. In fact; everything in Constanta, if it cost anything at all, was nothing more than a very small fee. Two cappucinos and a beer in the coffee shop only cost us the equivalent of about \u00a33.50 – entrance to the Roman Mosaic was no more than about \u00a31.50 each, as was the fee to climb the minarette… We were so surprised at how cheap things were, we ended up struggling to find ways to spend the Romanian currency that Tracey had mugged the cash-machine for.<\/p>\n

It was cool all morning, and at one point, we even had a thunderstorm and rain. By the time we’d returned to the ship and had lunch, however (having failed to find a suitable place to eat and spend our Romanian currency), the temperature had risen and the afternoon turned out pleasantly warm and sunny. There were a few things I needed to do internet-wise, so Tracey went off for another walk for a couple of hours, while I made use of the free wi-fi (along with most of the crew from the Minerva), in the terminal building.<\/p>\n

\"Constanta_03\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Later on in the afternoon, we were sat on the back deck watching the sun go down over the extensive shipyards that surrounded us. As massive cranes lurched like giant robots above ships and tugs, kicking up dust and spray that partially obscured more cranes and ships, I was reminded of just how artistically inspiring industry can be, and added ‘Industrial Landscape’ to my growing shortlist of YouTube painting demonstrations to do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived at Constanta in Romania. Having no escorting duties and a whole day to ourselves (bliss), we decided to have a leisurely trip into the town by shuttle bus – see what’s occurring, then make our way back to the ship on foot. Constanta as a whole is quite vast; it stretches out, around a large bay, to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}