I won't lie, I feel this post a lot deeper than many articles written before because if you've seen one of my previous travel posts, you'll know that I created a similar article about Sulina, which I entitled "The leftovers of Sulina".
For some, the title of my post might seem a bit too harsh especially if they lived in that town, but for me, it represents the cruel reality that shares a similar landscape and situation in a lot more cities from Romania than the one mentioned.
Hence why, the post of today is going to follow a similar situation with a completely different history but which sooner or later turned into an almost dead town, especially off-season.
So, to take it with the beginning, Constanta is perhaps the most famous city in Romania when it comes to beaches, summer vibes, and fun. But along with Constanta, there are a lot more cities surrounding it with even more potential but which, unfortunately, don't enjoy the same amount of tourists, nor the same promotion.
One of them is Tulcea, the town that represented our final destination after a 16-hour long train ride, which even though I've seen before, in 2022 when I repeated the experience with my boyfriend the things seemed a lot worse than last seen in 2019. This is something that makes me really sad because if things change so fast in just 3 years, most likely the town will no longer exist 30 years from now unless a miracle happens.
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I won't lie by saying that I covered the whole city during our walks because that's not true, but we did have quite a few walks in more parts of Tulcea and every single landscape expressed the same emotion - a dusty communist feeling, with buildings that lost their color and life a long while ago and where the single 'friends' they can find down the street, are the various shops, restaurants and renting places that are nothing but an abandoned space that perhaps keeps the homeless people safe during the winter.
I bet this is the worst way you've seen me describing a place in all the 260 current travel posts, and I won't deny that because it's true.
But after seeing so many places part of my home country, it's almost impossible not to run into a city like this one where you barely see someone on the street. And that's the moment when my heart starts typing instead of my hands.
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For example, the first collection of pictures represents the center of Tulcea which perhaps should be the main attraction of the city, or, at least, the most nicely looking one where the city hall should take care of its image. But the single thing 'alive' we could find there, were the fountains where the water was slowly flowing but which wasn't enough to cover all the rusty pipes and details that show how much time passed since it was cleaned or renovated.
At the opposite pole, it's the rest of the town that you can see in the 2nd paragraph of pictures, where you get to walk on long streets animated just by some cars crossing by... or the waterfront of the city which we couldn't properly enjoy due to the many machines that were restoring the alley. A thing quite weird for me since I guess this kind of rehabilitation should be done off-season but somehow they were still there in August when we had our trip and didn't see a lot of progress. This makes me think if somehow they aren't already abandoned too due to the lack of funds.
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Anyway, after we completely forgot to use the sun cream during our 12-hour long boat ride exploring Danube Delta, we ended up with a pretty weird tan on our bodies. I will just say that we both wore a T-shirt and three-quarter trousers and I'm sure you will already realize what I'm talking about.
Tulcea has just 30 meters in altitude and it's mostly surrounded by water. So with this thought, we started our journey looking for a place where we can go on a beach and get a proper tan. However, the solitude beaches and nice-looking ones were quite far from the town and we needed a car to reach them, so we opted for the single beach in town that was also quite close to our hotel.
That's how we found out about an artificial lake surrounded by a park and a beach that was created by the city hall with the main purpose of taking care of its locals' good mood. Our first thought was 'ok, we have a lake and a beach next to each other, so that means we can also take a bath, right?' - but the answer to our question came instantly when we reached the beach and noticed that it's blocked by an improvised fence to keep us away from the lake, where, by the way, we noticed a fairly big snake in it. (see last picture from above)
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The artificial beach is fairly small, so after picking up the spot we wanted because there was just one more person on the beach, we sat down and started praying for a tan that will fix the burns obtained in the previous day.
However, as lovely as the whole place seems and I still consider it a cool investment made by the city hall, as much I hated the alley that was separating the beach from the lake because anyone crossing by, was always staring at us which made us feel uncomfortable a bit.
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Happily, with a good book next to me and a sky full of beautiful clouds, the time at the beach passed pretty fast and we only needed a few hours to realize how hard is to get a tan because none of us likes sitting on a beach with this purpose, so we considered it a rough lesson but a well learned one and that next time we should use the sun cream to avoid this mistake ever again, haha!
Ciuperca Beach is located near the lake and the park with the same name, which come as a continuation to the city's train station that can be reached pretty easily by walking or by taking a taxi because the bus infrastructure of the town doesn't cover that location.
Tulcea can be reached through various methods because is not a marine city like the ones presented in the previous posts, so either you come with a car, a train, a bus, or a boat, it definitely worth a visit since it's home to Danube Delta and there are many boat rides that you can enjoy from here.
More articles from the same adventure:
- Tales of a 16 hours long train ride
- Tomis Harbor
- Mila 23
- Letea Forest and its wild horses
- Sulina and its leftovers
- Sulina Beach
- Tulcea and Ciuperca Beach
- Hotel Delta 4*
- Danube Delta Museum and Aquarium
- Medigidia - the city of cats
SEE YOU IN THE NEXT TRIP! 🗾
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