Longing For Some Color, Once Again Blue

Wednesday's walk is the best walk of the week. Not because I chose the most spectacular places but mostly because it's a walk I know I will share with you. Hence more attention to detail, hence more attention to what's going on around me, otherwise I might get distracted by the conversation with my wife or if I'm alone, the music on my headphones.

Today, the continuation of the walk from two weeks ago. Longing for some color, because these days I'm surrounded by nothing but grey. The walk started here: Walking to the Rhythm of the Blues.

For anyone who doesn't have the desire to find out for themselves where the walk started I'll tell you here. It was a bright and colorful walk in Herastrau Park, the most famous park in Bucharest, Romania. A park that also has a lake and where a detour around it consumes 4 km, a distance I want to walk every day.

The joy of this walk was the colors of autumn, still resilient and persistent, even though it was already winter. An increasingly shy winter that has yet to show its face.

A strange species of conifer with drooping leaves gave color to the park paths.

On this walk, I will be paying closer attention to some of the many restaurants and terraces built in this park.

This is a famous restaurant, leftover from ancient times. Now it has been repaired, redecorated, and modernized. It's called the Seagull.

I like the way it looks now and the interior decoration with paper birds. A very good peachy restaurant. In the past there were only a few restaurants in the park and accessible to all, the park was thought, in communism, as a place of relaxation for the working class.

With the transition to a democratic society, the fastest entrepreneurs were former communist dignitaries and former security workers, i.e. all those who were privileged under communism. Their immediate interest was in the park, to occupy the sites, and to build terraces and restaurants, which were very profitable in this place. This is how more and more buildings, beautiful or ugly, appeared on the lakeshore.

It is true that some of these terraces are well done, with a modern design and elegance.

These terraces are not only elegant but also exclusive. Very expensive. Frequented by foreigners working in Romania, businessmen, athletes, successful artists, and gangsters! That is, those who have a lot of money. That's why I won't be able to tell you what it's like from the inside.

However, that was not my interest in this ride. I wanted to see the intense colors of autumn one more time and my wife, knowing my passion for blue, got a coat to match.

Here is a sluice built in 1932. I have never seen it in operation. Theoretically, its purpose was to ensure the passage of small ships from one lake to the other.