Day 38-Clean bike, box bike and tour Bucharest

5 Jul

Today I woke at about 7.30 am ... A far cry from the 5.30am starts of recent weeks.Bit funny but I do miss the early morning wake-ups by Chris with his happy greetings in the morning.

After a good breakfast at the hotel it was off to clean the bike and bike bags. This is really important as the Australian customs folk are very particular about dirt and gravel on sporting equipment. So this took some time with the help of a fellow from the maintenance section of the hotel.

It was then off to the local bike shop to box the bike for the plane trip to Paris after which I will ditch the box for my bike carry bag which I will use for the trip home

I have been very lucky to have Jerome Vidal who looked after the bag in Paris.... Jérôme’s parents looked after Chris and I on our last bike ride in France as Warm Showers hosts...

Getting the bike in the box back to the hotel was interesting as I caught a local bus .... I am now an official “fare evader “ as the process of paying bus fares is so complex that advice I received was to simply hop on the bus and take my chances.

Anyway it worked...

After sorting out some tape to close the box I decided to take a “ big bus” tour of Bucharest. It took about an hour and was very interesting and I was fairly impressed with the public buildings and the parks... the big issue here is the number of cars on the road and being parked everywhere and I mean everywhere!!!Seems parking on the footpath is legal which makes pedestrian progress difficult... this seems to be a real problem in most of the big cities in Europe. Something we need to think about back home

After the big bus trip I decided to buy a new pair of sneakers as the sneakers I have been using on this trip have fallen apart and despite several cleans they stink something bad!

The shopping mall I visited was fairly basic so finding a suitable replacement pair was difficult and I normally have a 30 minute rule on shopping... not completing the expedition inside 30 minutes.... I just made it!

After finding my way back to the hotel I then sorted out my final packing with most of my gear going in the bike box

As I do this blog I have the TV on listening to CNN who are talking about the the extreme heat in Europe over the past week. Seems global warming is here to stay...

Now for the photos

Christian packing my bike carefully... he forgot to pack the back wheel and had to bring it to me at the hotel...