Summer Vacation - Week 5 - Travel Day Bucharest to Varna and back again

Travelling can sometimes be adventurous, even more so than one wants... this trip and this particular day were definitely not an exception.  What started off as a nice car upgrade to a brand spanking new very sporty model wagon turned into a bit of a nightmare to be honest with you.  We started off the morning driving out of town in some pretty crazy Bucharest rush hour traffic.  Maybe an hour later we made it to a highway and were zooming along in our nice new car.  Only to get detoured through the countryside.  Think old men and women in horse and buggies.  Not the Amish styled ones either.  These were little horses and some serious old school buggies.  And if we looked over on the side of the road we often saw men and women out at their wells bringing up pails of water.  It really brings a person back some years.

Regardless, about an hour into the country side the road ended.  Yep, just ended.  So we had to take a an extremely old school ferry over to the Bulgarian border.  And boy was it hot.  As we got off the ferry it took us a few roundabouts to finally figure out where border control even was.  Then once we went to cross the very stern customs agent informed us that we were happy to go across the border but there was no way our car was going over.  Why I asked?  No good explanation.  Can you help I asked?  "No" the border agent advises.... "This is not America, it is not easy here."  Are there any car rental companies here?  "No, there are no companies, only individual people that will rent you their car."  IN the end, this didn't seem like a good idea, so we headed back to the airport to sort out plan B.  Several different options popped up, a flight directly to Varna that would have set us back 2 days and $2,000.  Skipping Varna all together, but then who would pick up Chris.

As we got back to the car rental place we were a little down on our luck.  Luckily the car rental company informed us they have plenty of cars that can go into Bulgaria.  Only ours could not because it was brand new and apparently had just a temporary tag on it.  They also advised maybe they should have told us that when we got the car.  Oh well, we just felt lucky to have a ride and a way to stay with our original plans.  We headed back out to Varna around 4pm and made it there just before 9pm.  Wow.  What a day!

Here is a picture from the ferry ride.