Our day’s activities could be summed up in two words, Therme Bucharest. But dear reader, I’m guessing you’d prefer I share more details and immerse you in our day’s activities.

Our day began with a shower in the hotel, because the first thing you have to do when you reach the spa is shower. I’m guessing they don’t want lots of body oils and other beauty products floating around in the thermal pools that the spa is famous for. Having showered, we went down to breakfast. We knew it wouldn’t be the all-singing, all-dancing buffet we’d enjoyed at other hotels earlier in the year. This is a small city hotel and not a giant sprawling coastal hotel with hundreds of rooms. But that said there were many things to like. The freshly squeezed orange juice was delightful. The yoghurt with assorted toppings was wonderful. Our host kept trying to encourage me to have the cooked breakfast, but I’m really not a fan of cooked breakfast unless I’m in the UK.

Having eaten breakfast we returned to our room to pack a bag with our swimming towel and swimming costumes/trunks and then headed outside to be ready for our Bolt ( for Bolt read Uber) taxi to arrive. Yesterday we spent time figuring out where the 100 bus would stop which would take us back to the airport, and from there a 400 bus would take us to the spa. Having discussed how long it took us to find the first bus stop, we decided there was too much risk to use the buses in a city that we don’t really know, or haven’t spent much time in. So we checked the price of a Bolt taxi and discovered that it would be £17 which was really cheap considering it was door-to-door.

Driving in Bucharest is an art form all of its own. The line of traffic ahead of you is a tangled string of chaotic actions. You have cars weaving across lanes. You have cars cutting straight across the dual carriageway. You have cars approaching you from every direction as several lanes of traffic merge and swerve across open intersections, to take the roads on the left or right or straight ahead. And there seems to be no single lane in which any of these activities occur. Somehow they all happen simultaneously, and the effect is like a living breathing entity swishing it’s dragon like tail back-and-forth. How our taxi did not sustain three or four sideswipes and dents on its wing I will never know. At one point we had a car pull out in front of us as we were hurtling towards them at 80 km an hour, and I genuinely thought we were going to have to adopt the brace position. The hair on the back of my head was standing on end. The driver responded by moving over into the outside lane and then the car blocking the road pulled out more, at which point the driver hit the hard shoulder and scooted around them. Wow. If we undertook tactics like that in the UK, you would either have a severe amount of beeping horns or you would have one of the traffic enforcement officers hauling you off the road. At one point we were doing 80 km an hour, then slowed to 40 km an hour, emerging onto a roundabout with traffic approaching us from all sides. The ladies said that as they looked out of their rear windows with cars bearing down on the taxi from both sides, they didn’t know how it wasn’t diced-n-sliced. I guess all the other drivers were expecting everyone else to maintain their course and speed. Somehow they all judged whether they could actually occupy the space they were aiming for. I thought I was a reasonably confident driver, but against this crowd I’m a namby-pamby British timid driver. By contrast, the Romanians that are driving around Bucharest have got balls of steel.

The spa is essentially a stoking-sized glass house. We arrived at 9:40 and ambled through the front entrance and into the queue line. I’m pleased to say we were reasonably close to the front which was our first goal achieved. The thing you need to know dear reader, is you’re unable to book any of the massage treatments before you arrive. Nothing can be booked online. In this case, the early bird really does catch the worm. By 11 am all of the massage slots had sold out and people were being turned away. Once we had changed into our swimming costumes and stashed our clothes and tech in our lockers we made our way upstairs to the treatment centre’s main reception to book our massages. Liz was wondering how we would pay for them. I said I thought the ID watch they’d issued each of us with would be used, but seeing the groups of people in front of us brandishing their mobile phones, Liz popped back downstairs to grab her phone in case that’s how you paid for the massage. It turns out that’s not how you pay for the massage. You tap your ID watch on the card reader and it assigns the value of the massage to your credit account. None of this was explained to us, but having seen it in action we soon got the idea. When it was our turn the receptionist started the dialogue by checking that we were English or Romanian and then pointing out which massages she had on offer today and apologising that the full list was not available. I suspect they have fewer staff working during the week and a fuller complement of staff on a Friday and at weekends when the site is busier. I booked a relaxing massage as did Charlotte and Liz booked a hot and cold stones massage.

That done, we headed downstairs to occupy a couple of loungers. Charlotte and I decided we would not get in the pool at that point because our massage started in 30 minutes and we didn’t want to get wet beforehand. So we sat and chatted for 30 minutes, leaving Liz to go off and start her swim.

Reporting to the treatment centre a few minutes before our massage was due, we only waited for a couple of minutes before it was time for our massage to begin. My massage was undertaken by a lovely young Indonesian woman called Joy who had been working at the spa for the last two years with her elder sisters. Don’t be fooled by a petite Indonesian woman, and think that the massage pressure that she’s going to give you will be light and breezy. I had to stop her a couple of times to check the pressure because she has arms of steel and can apply a tremendous amount of pressure through her forearms hands and fingers. But overall Joy had a wonderful touch and I really enjoyed my massage. Regrouping downstairs Charlotte and I left Liz sitting on the lounges as her massage was due to begin 10 minutes later, and we headed outside to the outdoor thermal pools. Even though it was a chilly day, the thermal pools were steaming and a gorgeous 37° C.

Char and I stayed in the outdoor pools for 30 minutes nattering and enjoying the view across the man-made lake and beach area. I’m sure the beach area had been super popular all summer with the local children and visiting families. As we glided through the pool back towards the stairs Char spotted a door into the indoor pool which we used to save getting cold as we retreated inside.

After we got out of the pool, I decided to go for a sauna and dry off while we waited for Liz to emerge from the massage room. I tried three of the five saunas, as each one had a different scent. E.g. aromatic spices or herbs which fragranced the air. I was disappointed that the citrus-scented sauna only ran at weekends and Monday to Thursday the Amazon sauna hosted a flora and fauna experience. But it was probably my favourite one, with the spice sauna being a close second.

After lunch, we took Liz into the outdoor pools as she’d only tried the first and not the warmer second pool. And then we tried the reclining Jacuzzis, followed by the zinc and selenium pool. While we were immersing ourselves in the zinc and selenium goodness, the ladies perused the pool bar menu and ordered Here we ordered a Coke Zero, a glass of Peroni and yes, you’ve guessed it a piña colada.

Now that our lunch had gone down a bit we headed for the waterpark. To temper your expectations, there aren’t too many flumes but the ones they had were really good. I persuaded everybody to go down one that was a lot like the dragon ride at Siam Park but on a smaller scale. At first the ladies weren’t too sure but I reassured them that it wasn’t too fast or as large. I was surprised to discover quite how fast it was as I hurtled down the ride (always lean back on the rubber ring, right Dan). As I descended the last hill at speed, and then up the apron of the ride, I was going so fast I genuinely thought my feet would hit the top of the ride. But gravity rode to my rescue and dragged me back down with only 20cm of runway above me. And then I descended rapidly through the last section of the ride and into the splash pool. It was a great day which we all really enjoyed. 

After sitting in a lot of traffic as our Bolt driver transported us back to the hotel, we returned to the room to hang our towels on the heated towel rail in the bathroom before walking down the road to a pastrami shop that we spotted yesterday evening. As we entered we were warmly welcomed by our host who spoke really good English, walked us through the menu and gave us a free sample of the pastrami to try. I ordered a house pastrami sandwich, Charlotte opted for the pulled beef sandwich and Liz went for the Philly cheesesteak. They were delicious. That’s all folks! Good night.