FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Brasov

Today we had to make lemonade out of lemons. George had repeatedly told us that the weather was unseasonably warm and that there should have been snow by now. It had not really affected us...until today. The lack of snow meant that the city walk was decidedly easier than walking around Sofia, but the town certainly looked more spectacular in the postcards when it was covered in white velvet. More importantly, today was our first day where we had "snow fun" pencilled in. Brasov is the place where the people of Bucharest come to ski and have fun. The ski fields are ony 16km from the central square so it is a great place to impress a new girlfriend with facncy restaurants, city nightlife and great skiing during the day. Today the girlfriends would've been well fed, but lacking in exercise as the ski fields were a ghost town. The chair-lifts were not operating, there was no point running the snow machines and most of the ski runs were just mud or slush. No second dates scored here! Sadly for the locals though, the ski season officially opened more than a week ago

We displayed our true tourist character by pulling out our $3 plastic "toboggans" and letting the kids go nuts on a small strip of snow/ice/slush. This turned out to be the best $9 we have ever spent. The looks from the two nearby tweens changed from derision/amusement to jealousy as they watched our three offspring giggling uncontrollably as they formed a crazy, spinning caterpillar chain that travelled all the way down the hill before breaking up into its individual components, scattering in front of the flimsy, plastic orange safety fence.

The kids eventually tired of walking back up the hill so we took the bus back to town, sorted out some logistics and headed to lunch at Festival 39. Malcolm had "discovered" this place ages ago, but didn't remember anything about it. It turned out to be a very cozy jazz bar with leather club chairs, a nice variety of food (we were getting a bit "proteined out"), great (and good value) cocktails and an interesting collection of old instruments and other items that hed been purchased by the owner who was a collector of sorts.

The group split in the afternoon into shoppers, nappers, bloggers and device users before we finally gave in to our Asian food deprivation. Old Shanghai was surprisingly good. The waitress spoke Mandarin and the food was decent enough to make Oma and Opa happy. It was certainly wasn't a 1980s western chinese joint. Gelato, chestnuts and mulled wine capped off a wonderful day. Not quite lemonade, but better than lemon chicken.