Tirrilstrip12
 Day 137 So it was straight onto the main road to head for Oradea – a town near the border which our guidebook says is worth a look. It’s a long slog on the road – endless villages strung out along the road, although each seems to specialise in it’s own range of roadside stalls – fruit, veg, gnomes, pottery, wooden carvings etc etc. And an endless stream of HGVs heading in the other direction. Now here’s a first. Got to a central car-park in Oradea, and we were busy trying to decipher the car-park fees by the ticket machine when a parking attendant who was there checking tickets came up to us. He didn’t speak English, but he succeeded in conveying to us that we needed to pay in coins as the machine wouldn’t accept notes or foreign credit cards. We showed him what coins we had – he then got one of his own out to add to ours and put them all in the machine to get us a ticket. He then got his phone out, rang someone and handed the phone to us. Apparently it was his son, who did speak some English, and he explained that we needed to go to a nearby kiosk where we could buy car park tickets if we wanted to stay longer. Can you imagine one of our dear traffic wardens doing that for a confused foreigner? Now Oradea turned out to be quite an interesting place. At first glance it didn’t seem of any particular note. But we gradually realised this was because there were a lot of buildings under wraps, where restoration work was going on. Those that had been renovated looked really good with some fascinating architecture. There was one pedestrianised street that had been finished and was a very attractive area – give it 2 or 3 years of further renovation and making more of the squares and piazzas here and it’ll be a really lovely place to visit. After our visit, we headed for the border. Nobody at all on the Romanian side, and the Hungarian officer only wanted a cursory glance at our passports and we were through – the satnav pinging to remind us that we had a whole extra hour to play with as we crossed a time zone. And then it was long, flat, straight road after long, flat, straight road as we trundled westward. We’re heading in the general direction of Budapest and hadn’t got any particular expectations of anywhere on the way as we selected our next campsite – our birding book had a place it recommended so we decided to aim for there, despite our disappointment of the Turda gorge. We eventually got here – and what a delight! Really nice little campsite at Hortobagy with lots of shade (yes – we still need it), and the village here is the centre of a national park. There are various interesting buildings, a visitor centre and all sorts of things to see and do. We’ll find out more tomorrow and stay another night here!
|
Diary Photos
|
Pedestrianised street in Oradea |
 Square in Oradea |
 Renovated building, Oradea |
 Oradea Town Hall |
| 573 Words | This page has been read 14 times | View Printable Version |