Farewell Bucharest & Romania

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We've spent our last night in Bucharest. I don't know why but I think neither of us slept well. Weekend breakfast at Europa Royale is from 8 to 11 am so we got a late start anyway. Checkout was noon and we checked out about 20 of and headed out to Starbucks on the corner about 12 of noon. Our driver was already there waiting for us as promised. We booked this transfer to Giurgiu and AmaCerto through Viator. The provider was Go Thor. Our driver was Marius Preda. We paid $127 for the private transfer from Europa Royale to AmaCerto. It was a new 8-passenger Mercedes van. It was good service.

It turned out to be only about a 50 minute drive. Check in onboard did not begin until 3 pm. We had thought the drive would be about twice that long! Anyway, staff from the riverboat immediately came and took our luggage aboard even though all the departing passengers had not left. We showed our passports and were checked on a new passenger manifest and asked to make ourselves comfortable in the forward lounge. I pointed out that we had not gotten our cruise documents before leaving home and our rolling duffels did not have our cabin number. He assured me they'd take care of it and they did. They had a light lunch buffet set up with hot drinks available or iced tea or water. There was a barman on duty but I have no idea if he was selling drinks because we didn't have keycards yet and the departing passengers had closed their accounts. AmaWaterways has complimentary beer, wine and soda at lunch & dinner. There is a welcome cocktail party at 6:30 pm tonight during the mandatory safety briefing where I assume drinks are complimentary. Dinner is served at 7:30 pm. Painfully late for us! The headwaiter approached us in the lounge to try to reserve our place at a special Chef's Table dining room for a fixed 7-course dinner tonight or some other night. I turned him down. We think that is included but can't swear to it. At 7:30 pm the ship sails more or less across the Danube River to overnight at Rousse, Bulgaria. We are scheduled to arrive at 9 pm.

At 3 pm, we went to reception and exchanged our passports for safetycards. They open our door to 332, the last port cabin on the highest cabin deck of 3. They have a barcode that we have to scan to leave and re-enter the boat.

The boat is quite attractive inside. We can't really tell about the outside as it is down an embankment and tied to some metal structure that blocks our view.  Our cabin is one of a few cheap seats on this deck here at the aft end. So, it is quite small but seems functionally designed and laid out. It has a sliding glass door in the window side, so the whole cabin becomes a balcony I suppose. We were surprised to find the cabin walls are NOT metal so the magnets we usually organize cruise cabins with are useless. We unpacked everything without any problems. We are happy to have an ice bucket and an ice machine at the far end of the hall. We have a functional minifridge that actually seems to cool things. It was filled with complimentary bottle water though we're told the tap water is potable. Our ice bucket fits in there so that should minimize ice runs. Clay went to a magazin ashore and spent a forgetten 10 lei bill on a stash of Diet Pepsi so he can have a soda when he wants and not just at meals. Oh, and Kleenex in the room for the first time since leaving home!

The Cruise Manager is not here yet. He is with the pre-cruise passengers. We are told we have from his arrival to 9:30 pm to finalize our excursion bookings. We still want to cancel a return to Bucharest and have questions about the Rousse tour as a replacement. Stay tuned. I will post this now with the expectation that after dinner I'll be straight to bed! Any updates will be blogged about tomorrow.

We are on the Gems of Southeast Europe cruise. We paid just under $10,000 for this week so it wasn't cheap compared to the rest of the trip.

So, begins the final leg of our Eastern Europe adventure. The hard part should be over!

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