Constanta, Romania

Having completed the B's of Brasov, Bran and Bucharest, it was now time to move onto letter C - Constanta. My campsite, Camping Tabara, is one of several sites slightly north of the city in the town of Mamaia which is a summer destination for Romanians and much cheaper than the one in Bucharest. It is a nice spot sandwiched on a thin stretch of land with the Black Sea on one side and Lake Mamaia on the other.

The sea is warm and a sparkly green-blue while the sand is soft and golden. There are lots of resort type areas along the coast but luckily the campsite backs out onto a quiet stretch and you can have a large section of the beach almost to yourself now that we are out of the peak season.

On the other side, Lake Mamaia gave me the chance to catch up on a bit more windsurfing. During the summer, there are a few places which rent the gear but now the only place still open is Hotel Piccadilly and it is a little expensive (£20 per hour) to hire and not quite as fun as Lake Balaton.

As for Constanta, it is quite a large city and still an important port on the coast with plenty of Romania's roman history centred here. A lot of the city is a bit grey and monotonous but it has a bit more charm than Bucharest and a few nice buildings to boot when you get into the centre. One of these is the mosque which looks like a concrete bunker on the outside but is much more colourful on the inside and you can also climb the minaret to get a 360 degree view over the old town and the harbour.

In the centre of town are two parks. One contains the Opera house and next door is a great little bar, Cafe D'Art, with a mind-bending number of cocktails and trees coming through the dining area and sprouting out of the roof. The other park is a little greener and has the city's war memorial.

In the main square is the Archeology Museum but unless you have an unhealthy interest in old banknotes, roman pots or smoking pipes you can probably give the place a miss. Right behind the museum is the excavated site of a roman building with a huge mosaic floor partly uncovered.

Probably the nicest area is around the coast where the now derelict Casino stands alone by the water. Right behind is a nice little aquarium and just down the street is the lighthouse. As for the beach, it is sandy but a bit littered and not as nice as Mamaia.

In the evening, I met a group of travelling German guys and we played guitar and drank until the small hours while the next night we met up again for drinks at the van. Four Germans quickly became eight and there was even a Romanian geologist thrown in for good measure too. After lots of beer and Johnny Cash covers (and a random midnight swim in the sea) I allowed myself a bit of a lay-in before heading down the coast of the Black Sea and into Bulgaria.

Constanta was nice but unspectacular, much like Romania in fact. Time to move on.