Traveling with Michelle: Day 13: I haven't got a Cluj!

June 28, 2018

Sibiu and Cluj, Romania

Today we were up, showered, emptied the garbage, and ate breakfast, then packed up and got in the car to travel to Cluj. Our apartment in Sibiu was very cute with it's balcony and lavendar theme throughout. The bathroom was beautiful. This was all despite a rather dodgy outside and entrance to the building. We traveled through the rain most of the way, traveling on a road that paralleled a new freeway, complete with signs, that wasn't open yet. It only took about three hours winding through small villages and countryside. They grow a lot of sunflowers here. Corn too, which I was surprised by. Much of their hay is in actual haystacks while some is baled like ours at home.

Then we arrived in Cluj, a rather large city. We found our building, but had to park a few blocks away. Our host was there and showed us how to open the gate and where to park inside (so we don't have to pay by the hour on the street!).

It was raining, so we waited for about an hour until the rain let up, then went out. We walked around the old town, which is less "old towny" than the other cities. It is more unbanized, less cute.

I like the curvy supports

We walked to Unirii Square and went into the church there,

Public Art

A sculpture of a book

Buidings on the square

the church

a king, I believe

In the church

Many niches were empty--from the reformation?

Painting on the wall

altar

Stained glass window

Pulpit

and to Opera Plaza with another church and a little market that we walked around (I found some cute earrings!)

A house that looked very American

Transylvania, anyone?

An entrance to another cute restaurant that we didn't eat at

The church

The square

Beautiful mosaics!

Beautiful stonework

The outside of the church

The opera house

. Then we returned to Unirii Square for dinner at a sidewalk restaurant. We all got cherry lemonades and they were beautiful with a big cherry on top and a sprig of mint, but they tasted a little too sour. The meal was okay, but not spectacular. Joshua and I both had breaded fish. The fish was breaded on the fish skin, so you eat the fish skin too. Joshua pulled the skin and breading off and just ate the fish meat inside. You couldn't really taste it--it just looked weird. Joshua ordered broiled fish when we were in Timisoara and it came as a whole fish on his plate--eyes, skin, even the bones were still inside. Weird, but he said that it tasted good. While we were eating, the clouds went away and the sun came out.

A casteley looking building

We're not sure why the tents are on the square. There is a huge sign in Romanian about it. Maybe a protest of some sort?

Then the clouds came out as we started walking toward the huge hill to get a good view. It started sprinkling on the way, then it started raining when we were climbing the stairs. I had thought to bring my rain jacket, Joshua had a sweatshirt, and Randy had a hat. So we turned back about halfway up, then it started raining. We stopped at a market on way back for breakfast stuff. As we stepped into our apartment, it began pouring--we made it just in time!