Hi everyone! After deciding to go on a holiday back to my hometown of Tulcea, Romania, me and my GF (Geo as in geopopa on the forum), decided to drive there. Since it was going to be a long journey, we decided to visit a few cities on our way, to decide which ones are good candidates for city breaks (e.g. Bratislava) and which are not (sorry Budapest). Since we were passing through some nice places, I had the "brilliant" idea of taking pictures with the car in every place of interest. Sadly, most of the cities have a very aggressive "no parking near the main attractions" policy, so we did our best. We thought it might be nice to share our experiences here on the forum. Anyway, here's the first part of the journey: Bristol (U.K.) -> Tulcea (RO) First on our list was Antwerp, Belgium. Beautiful city, but I wasn't as impressed by the old part of town (after visiting Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, etc) so decided to go in the Old Harbour and see if we can find a nice spot. We didn't. The best we got were a couple of shots by the Museum aan de Stroom : Next up, we drove to Munich. As lovely as the city is, the main locations I had in mind for taking pictures were either BMW World and Allianz Arena. BMW World is in a park, so Allianz Arena seemed like a better idea. It wasn't. Parking anywhere near it was impossible, so this is the best shot I got: Feeling a bit discouraged and doubting my plan's chances of success, we got a message from Wilson (Lawrence - very active on the Facebook Group) asking us to visit him in the beautiful Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden. Vienna was our next destination, so we couldn't refuse a slight detour and loose the chance of driving up the mountains in the Juke. This is what happened next:Sadly, we had to move on and head over to Vienna. As you can imagine, it's very crowded, and the best we managed was to snatch a quick picture in the Schwarzenbergplatz.Moving on to Budapest, we wanted to take a picture in front of the parliament building, but parking was limited. It's still visible in the back: We made another overnight stop in Cluj-Napoca, but on the outskirts of town so it didn't exactly qualify for the album. However, The greatest driving road in the world! did, and the outcome was amazing. As a side-note, this was one of the main reasons we decided to drive back home.First of all, the view is incredible
I blurred Geo's face so I wouldn't get in trouble )She was taking this:Way up in the clouds (2000m) :And the road is just silly fun:The next stop on the list was Bucharest. Although it's an AMAZING city (just Google "Bucharest" and click on Images), I decided to take a shot with something that the British folk might expect, so I went in front of the biggest P.O.S. in the country, and tried to capture it's awfulness. Ladies and gentlemen, the "People's Palace" (heaviest building in the world, second largest, etc):The damn thing is so large, Geo had to take 3 pictures and stitch them via software. We tried to use the tripod. We failed.We then moved on to Constanta. Geo's hometown. We stopped in the Old City and stood in front of the former City Hall for the photo. Taking said photo in a parking lot proved a bit difficult, but this is the best we got:Afterwards, we moved to my hometown, Tulcea, right at the entrance to the Danube Delta:And that concluded the fist part of the journey. The second bit wasn't as successful photo-wise, but we did our best. So here's Tulcea -> Bristol :First (new) stop, Bratislava. Incredible city, definitely visiting it againrague was also OK, but DON'T PAY IN EUROS OR YOU WILL GET SCAMMED. We payed ~70 euros for a tank of fuel. It was also a city where parking in the centre was difficult, so we stopped near the castle:The last city on the list (asides from Brussels where we stopped just to buy beer), was Frankfurt am Main. The bad news is that we arrived on a Sunday, so parking anywhere near the centre was next to impossible, so Frankfurt Cathedral will have to do:We also blew a tyre in the world's tightest underground parking lot. Since Germany shuts down on Sundays, we spent the night in the small town of Maintal, outside of the city and it is gorgeous and probably has the best ice-cream in the world. We didn't regret a single second of our 1 day extension to the holiday. We did kinda regret the 240 euro tyre+labour charge for a single Conti, but on the other hand, I expected unexpected costs .And that's about it. A few things to get out of the way:- The Autobahn is amazing and the Nismo feels right at home:- Fuel consumption is stuck at 30 mpg on the dashboard, but the classic pen and paper method (well, Fuelly, but still) gave a 31.5 - 32 mpg. With A/C on >50% of the journey. The Autobahn dropped that right down to ~18. I REGRET NOTHING - The seats are really really good. Multiple 8-9 hour driving sessions and nothing ached. - No mechanical failures, rattling, or
unbearable cabin noise.- Once you go past Belgium, it's a real head-turner. The number of Jukes on the road drops dramatically. I think I only saw 2 other Nismos in total.- All of the pictures are available in high-res on my public imgur album.And that's about it. Thank you for your patience!Ionut and Geo.
IonutCava2015-08-27 16:38:55
I blurred Geo's face so I wouldn't get in trouble )She was taking this:Way up in the clouds (2000m) :And the road is just silly fun:The next stop on the list was Bucharest. Although it's an AMAZING city (just Google "Bucharest" and click on Images), I decided to take a shot with something that the British folk might expect, so I went in front of the biggest P.O.S. in the country, and tried to capture it's awfulness. Ladies and gentlemen, the "People's Palace" (heaviest building in the world, second largest, etc):The damn thing is so large, Geo had to take 3 pictures and stitch them via software. We tried to use the tripod. We failed.We then moved on to Constanta. Geo's hometown. We stopped in the Old City and stood in front of the former City Hall for the photo. Taking said photo in a parking lot proved a bit difficult, but this is the best we got:Afterwards, we moved to my hometown, Tulcea, right at the entrance to the Danube Delta:And that concluded the fist part of the journey. The second bit wasn't as successful photo-wise, but we did our best. So here's Tulcea -> Bristol :First (new) stop, Bratislava. Incredible city, definitely visiting it againrague was also OK, but DON'T PAY IN EUROS OR YOU WILL GET SCAMMED. We payed ~70 euros for a tank of fuel. It was also a city where parking in the centre was difficult, so we stopped near the castle:The last city on the list (asides from Brussels where we stopped just to buy beer), was Frankfurt am Main. The bad news is that we arrived on a Sunday, so parking anywhere near the centre was next to impossible, so Frankfurt Cathedral will have to do:We also blew a tyre in the world's tightest underground parking lot. Since Germany shuts down on Sundays, we spent the night in the small town of Maintal, outside of the city and it is gorgeous and probably has the best ice-cream in the world. We didn't regret a single second of our 1 day extension to the holiday. We did kinda regret the 240 euro tyre+labour charge for a single Conti, but on the other hand, I expected unexpected costs .And that's about it. A few things to get out of the way:- The Autobahn is amazing and the Nismo feels right at home:- Fuel consumption is stuck at 30 mpg on the dashboard, but the classic pen and paper method (well, Fuelly, but still) gave a 31.5 - 32 mpg. With A/C on >50% of the journey. The Autobahn dropped that right down to ~18. I REGRET NOTHING - The seats are really really good. Multiple 8-9 hour driving sessions and nothing ached. - No mechanical failures, rattling, orunbearable cabin noise.- Once you go past Belgium, it's a real head-turner. The number of Jukes on the road drops dramatically. I think I only saw 2 other Nismos in total.- All of the pictures are available in high-res on my public imgur album.And that's about it. Thank you for your patience!
Ionut and Geo.IonutCava2015-08-27 16:38:55
