We’ve reached the end of the Mahalla part of the tour, now we are heading to the market, boarding a tram to take us to the far flung Bucor Ober marketplace where we will shop for our lunch.  (Of course lunch is a little bit of a stretch as it is going on 3:30 before we even board the tram, but still, we should have plenty of time to do our shopping, eating, and still return for our orientation.)  As we ride out of the center of the city, we watch the communist flat buildings flash by.  They are painted now in different colors, which is a recent phenomenon, only occurring within the last few years to try to brighten up the look of the ordinarily grey and somber buildings.  Sort of works, actually.  Of course all the balconies that have been glassed in and painted vibrant colors helps the visual appeal too, until you look closely (or even not so closely) and see most of them are fairly shabbily done and falling apart at every seam.  I’d not step out on many of those balconies for fear of collapse!

Arriving at the market we walk through the consumer goods area – everything from jewelry to shoes to fashion – to get to the food.  The market is on 2 floors, the first floor containing every type of vegetable and fruit you can imagine, all looking beautiful and edible on the stalls.  We shop for onions, tomatoes, pick up grapes and honey for dessert, then head upstairs for the cheese and meats – stopping at the cheese stall to sample all the different cheeses and then making our selection from what we tried.  This is very fun!  Then of course, we also hit the wine store (because the folks with us want to try some wine), they taste a few things and buy a bottle before we repair back down stairs (taking the elevator because of our tour partners inability to walk much) and settle into a big table at the Mici stand right outside the market.  This place is packed – it’s a little square building with walk up service, a line a mile long and a huge patio filled with big picnic type benches under an enormous roofed shed type structure. 

Cristina orders our mici and beer, then sets about making a salad from all our purchases.  It’s really quite a feast!  Lots of wonderful fresh bread, two types of cheese and a beautiful tomato salad with onions, garlic and cucumbers all cut and mixed up before our eyes.   We all dig in, chatting about our upcoming river cruise and exclaiming over the freshness and taste.  Then the mici comes out, which as the sign in front of the stand proclaims, is the best mici in Bucharest.  It is excellent, perfectly spiced and cooked, and just wonderful.  We toast each other with the stupid plum brandy (but this stuff actually isn’t anywhere near as bad as the Yuntz-made stuff) and then begin on dessert of honeycomb and grapes.  We’re contentedly munching away on the honeycomb, our first time ever eating it, when Cristina sweetly says, “you know you are supposed to spit the wax out right?”  Um, no.  Dummies!  Oh well, it still tasted really good!

Unfortunately, though, time is getting really tight.  It’s well after 5 when we are just starting to finish our meal, and we need to be all the way across town at the Intercontinental by 6pm for our group meeting.  That’s not happening, unless we leave right now.  Ed is getting antsy, and the other 4 are just oblivious to the need to be back and at the meeting.  Finally we say that we really must be going, and we debate the best way to go back to the hotel – tram or Uber. The tram will take us within a 5-10 minute walk of the hotel, but where we can do that, the folks we are with definitely cannot.  So we opt for Uber and then begin the walk back out of the market, to find the best place to get the car.

On the way though we get treated to another specialty dessert, the name of which I’ve completely forgotten now, but it was like a big fluffy donut in a bag – one plain, one chocolate.  Excellent.  Of course, that slows us down more, so it is now getting extremely late.  Then the hunt for an appropriate place to pick up the Uber begins.  We need to get away from the tram station because it is too crowded, but as we walk across the street, we end up at a little side street atop one of the tunnels that helps traffic flow.  Cristina orders an Uber on her phone, and we order on ours, but they can’t find us, because they keep going through the tunnel, and ending up about 5 blocks away from us. It’s getting frustrating really quickly, as our driver circles around, we try to call him and have Cristina talk to him and then he finally cancels the trip.  Argh.  The other group isn’t faring any better either, but they do at least call the hotel to try to ask if the Gate 1 tour leader can be notified that we are late.  Sigh.  This is now getting ugly.

Another Uber ordered by Cristina arrives and the 4 group hop in to go.  That leaves us fretting and getting more anxious by the minute trying to find transportation.  No Ubers are taking our request and we are left standing on the side of the road with Cristina trying to clamp down on our frustration.  Finally we manage to wave down a taxi to take us back, and give a  huge hug and hurried goodbye to Cristina, promising to stay in touch (and reminding her we are totally serious about helping edit her English writing!), then it’s in the cab and off we go, into the thick of rush hour, horrible Bucharest traffic.

Yikes!  The cabbie is great though, he knows how to drive, makes all the lights and the turns, and goes as fast as he can, but there isn’t much he can do to avoid the sheer gridlock that is Bucharest.  As we inch along, we are getting more and more anxious, until finally we are just about at the National Theater, when we tell him we’ll get out here.  We can definitely walk faster than he can ever make it driving to the hotel.  We speed walk over to the entrance, and basically run up the stairs to the meeting room, where we meet our local guide, Bogdan, who is still standing guard next to the drinks. Ed gets a beer, but Bogdan doesn’t have a corkscrew so I can’t have wine, whatever, we’re here and going into the Orientation meeting, for whatever is left of it.

As it turns out, we probably don’t miss much, even though we were agg’ing about it.  Our fellow travelers, Lori and Raul from the Romania tour, catch us up on the talk – not much to know, just bus procedures.  Ok, we didn’t miss much, except the wine!

Outside the room Bogdan and Giorgio (our cruise guide) are at their table, giving us all our name tags and room keys – and Bogdan even has more wine poured for us!  Bless you! Then we turn in our luggage ticket (but dummy me doesn’t give the guys our room number – don’t ask, it is sort of a cluster f**k with getting room keys and luggage) and we retire up to our room – which is fantastic! It is really big, with a huge balcony and a great view of the city below us. Nice.

The luggage never makes it up to the room  (well, duh, because I never told them the room number!), so I venture downstairs, find the bags and bring them up, then we just hang out on the balcony relaxing after an excellent day in Bucharest.