This summer we (meaning the boyfriend - the designated driver - and me) decided to go to the seaside, and since we were in the area we thought we should visit Histria - he liked it, I’d never seen it and I’m fond of ruins. Give me ancient walls over sky-scrapers any day!
I mentioned the part about the driver because I think it’s quite impossible to get there any other way. We managed to get lost for a while (missing road signs, deserted roads… perfect combination), but in the end we made it there safe and sound.
A bit of history now: Histria was a Greek colony founded on the Black Sea coast in the 7th century BC and it existed for 14 centuries, until the 7th century AD. Since then the landscape has changed a bit, and the former seacoast is now the shore of the Sinoe lake. It is obviously very old and its history is complex, so for more details check out wikipedia.
I’m not quite sure what my opinion is. I wasn’t as impressed as I thought it would be. The place is very beautiful, but unfortunately there aren’t many explanations for just what you are looking at. Don’t get me wrong, there are signs (see below), but you can’t find any written guides or a map you can carry around with you. You might be able to book a tour guide, but we didn’t ask about it. One of the very good things, however, is that the signs that do exist are bilingual (one of the problems of museum etc. in Romania is the lack of English - or any other foregin language - on the signs).
What I liked best about the place is the peace and quiet. You won’t get groups of tourists all taking photos of the same wall or an annoying guide shouting in some language you don’t understand. We walked around for an hour or two and we only saw about 5 people. The best part was sitting on the shore of the lake and watching all the frogs jumping around (there were a LOT of frogs there).
(you can see them if you enlarge the photo and look in the bottom half)
And my favourite part of the city was this: the Roman baths. It was very hot and a bath seemed like a very good idea, actually :P But seriously now, the architecture was more interesting, all those arches… and I was able to jump around on the walls and look in all the crevices. I almost took a picture of a very cute European ground squirrel, but the damn thing ran off before I could get my camera out.
Unfortunately I wasn’t there for that long, so I can’t give you a lot of details, but for more info and photos check out the website of The Archaeological Site of Histria.