Hey, I'm back!

On the road..

As you might have noticed, I haven't post on Addicted To Books and Twitter - @addict_books lately. I have a reason for that. I was on vacation! Well, as I'm a student, I'm still on vacation - but I left town for 9 days (supposed to be 10 but Dad had some office work to do) and I just didn't have time - and Internet connection, the endless problem at the countryside - to post. My vacation started on July 14 and ended on July 23. July 12 and July 13 were absolutely busy. I was busy, busy, bee-like busy =))

So here I'll write my "schedule" I had these days.

Prep Day 1

My house looks like a real all-stuff-from-clothes-to-food depository. A chaos. My folks start searching for clothes they haven't seen like for a year.. Departure is always hard, as I can see. Tomorrow I'm going at my hairstylist to cut my hair - it's just too scorching hot for my hair to resist the sweat that may come :)). So I'm starting packing today. First thing, listing all the stuff I wanna bring with me. Tomorrow I'm gonna be busy with ordering them... Yeah, my parents agreed I should now have my own suitcase - I'm 13, for goodness sake - and I can pack as many things as I want. Or, better said, as many things as my luggage can keep without exploding after zipping it =)). Hope I'll stick to the list..... :)

Prep Day 2

I've just come from my hairstylist. My hair is finally normal-sized (when you have hair as curly as mine, it's kinda a bless :D). Now the war begins. As I thought I wouldn't stick to my hope in the end, I've just started adding and removing stuff originally on my luggage list. For example, Sea by Heidi R. Kling finally arrived and I am in the sea-love now. I piss Mom off by asking questions like "Mom, I need an apricot T-shirt" or "Mom, do I have any turquoise shirts or skirts?!" or "Hey, Mom, look - Sea-inspired necklace!" or "Um.. Mom, can I borrow your orange T-shirt?". With my Sea craziness even before it arrived, the post office in Bucharest now knows my Sea devotion. Now I'm starting adding and removing books from my luggage over and over again - I even want to take all my Vampire Academy series! I know very well I can't read all the books in this vacation but I always want to over-stuff my luggage - I don't want to take the risk to run out of books or lipstick, etc... you know, girl stuff :). Finally, I only take Sea, Need and Captivate by Carrie Jones, and Frostbite (VA #2) by Richelle Mead. I feel nervous about tomorrow.. I always feel nervous before a trip :D. I just can't sleep..

Day 1

Yeah, "awesome" start of the day - I only slept for about 3 hours overall and I now have to spent 7 hours on the road. From Bucharest (South-East of Romania) to Hateg (Hunedoara - West of Romania). Cool, huh?! I can't read in the car - because of my eye problems, I think, I'm nauseous each time I read or search for something in my backpack, etc... I can only listen to music. Bad luck, my MP3 has to be charged and my headphones for my cellphone seem broken. I can only sleep. Bad luck again, I can't even sleep in a plane, let talking a car. So all I have to do is looking out of the window, taking photos, trying to read a bit and kinda fix the headphones. Mission done. I'm finally in Hateg, I have tons of energy and I wanna go to the swimming pool in the hotel. But, see, I'm not in a good shape, it seems. I stop swimming after half an hour :D

....

Day 3

I'm on our way to a national park and reservation in Retezat Mountains. There are TONS of insects, especially mosquitoes and bees, here. And seems like I smell good for them. I must give up perfuming me and stick on the soap I wash myself with.. Here we go by car for about 1000 meters, then climb by foot some other hundreds of meters to a lake. Ohmy, the path is so narrow and hard to climb. My head doesn't work anymore on the take-photos stuff. All I want to do is to stay safe. And, happily, I kinda stay. I only have a bruise or two on my legs

Day 4

A longer trip this time. Me and my parents are going to visit an old castle in Hunedoara (still Romania (=..) where kings, queens, knights, etc lived. It's great! The whole castle is built from river stones, and it has a river in the front of it. Like castles from all the fairy tales. There's sort of a fair in the castle with books, traditional stuff and.. (I'm surprised, too) British jewelry from the times King Arthur lived. I'm buying a Celtic ring with dolphins - it's so cute!

Day 5

Me and my folks don't have anything to visit anymore, so we ask the hotel staff for more sights. They tell us we can visit one of the two (only) bison park in the WHOLE WORLD ( :O ) and an Arboretum in a little town called Simeria (At first, I think the staff said Siberia LOL). So we're gonna visit both of them. We first go to the bison park because it's the first place on our way. We are surprised to see that there are no souvenirs or info books or something.. But the bison matter (and, later on, the photos I have (:..) They are really nice. They aren't aggressive (but, really, who can be aggressive on that scorching hot day!?), they seem... bored. Their boredom is funny - they wander and wander and want to walk through trees but they can't, obviously =)). It's a pity there are only 5 bison (including a baby bison). So, we've just seen the bison, now we're heading towards the Arboretum. Arriving there, we find out its size is of.. 70 hectares - totally huge! When we start wandering through the Arboretum (and hoping we're not gonna get lost), mosquitoes suddenly come after us, biting and annoying us. After an hour we decide to go (I dunno how many hectares we've seen so far) so we start going back.. But, yeah, we got lost. We start walking out of the paved road, and climbing on mud (yikes!), through trees. We hope that if we go straight uphill we'll arrive at the main entrance. And, happily, we arrived :). We go back to our hotel

Day 6

So this is the day when we stay in the hotel and pack and so on. I have some free time to surf the internet (well, well, "surprise" - the connection is really low) and read. Sea is great. Sienna and Deni are an adorable couple :). I go to the swimming pool for the last "bath" ( :(( ) and then I go search for a cute, fluffy kitten I saw wandering in the yard. She's absolutely lovely! I take some photos of her and then I'm having dinner with my parents. Finally, I take a walk with them (my folks) in the village. It's really nice. First, fresh air - I need it for my allergy (I have an allergy at dust, humidity, etc and I have to use nasal solutions every day and it's absolutely pissing. me. off!). Second, welcoming people - they all salute us when they see us, even if they don't have a clue about who we are. Third, everything's peaceful here, like there are no problems on Earth. Hope we'll come here again soon =).

Day 7

We leave this village at about 10am, ready for a looooong day on the road. It took us about 5-6 hours to arrive. I start reading, then listening to music, then taking a nap - this sort of stuff. The destination is another village, closer to Bucharest this time. Surprisingly, when we arrive, there are no tourists. Well, more silence. Excepting the fact there's a sand factory across the road. I start walking towards it and.. surprise, surprise, it's working without stopping (argh!). I feel so sleepy. I'm even too lazy to have a shower (but of course I have). And, surprisingly, I fall asleep at about 11pm. I rarely sleep at 11pm. My hours of falling asleep? 12am, 1am, 2am :D

Day 8

Because we have nothing else to do, me and my folks start visiting other villages close to ours. We also go close to another national park - Bucegi National Park. There are lots of people camping and having BBQs. We have lunch at a restaurant there. I'm having fried fish with French fries - yum, yum, yum. We have 2 extra companions at our table - 2 little, cute and fluffy kittens! Lucky them I ordered fish :)). We come back at our hotel. We watch TV, surf the internet, read. And, of course, pack again. Tomorrow we're leaving, sadly.

Day 9

I have some milk and cereals before leaving with my folks. This time we're going home. The road isn't crowded (at least, not on our direction - on the other, kilometers of cars are heading towards the mountains for another skiing weekend). We arrive after 3 hours. Imagine coming from 20 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius - jeez. We are welcomed home by my Grandma and my cousin, Alex. He came here before coming to his swimming lesson (the most popular swimming pool in Bucharest is at 1 km far from us). It's good to be home, although I want more days at the countryside...

So this is kind of my diary of this journey. I hope you enjoyed reading and.. you have a cool holiday too!

See ya,

-Ana.