Sometimes it's not about the time spent on the way to a destination, nor about weather or money, but about the whole journey on the way to what we call 'destination' which turns out to be one of those complete trips from the moment you jump on a boat until the moment you return to the same dock.

I'm pretty sure that not many of you remember this post which comes as a continuation to some articles written a few months ago because I've also almost forgotten about this.
The reality is that I did a terrible job controlling my schedule which actually turned out as the schedule controlled myself, that sooner or later turned out into a pretty chaotic feed where I wanted to share lots of things in a short period of time without being 100% focused on a specific topic, so yeah, I began with the beautiful stories where I and my boyfriend spent 16 hours in a train ride on the way to our very first vacation in two and far away from the place where we are currently living, then I got excited about my most recent trip on that time where I attended my favorite singer, then another spontaneous trip came by, which would make 0 sense to postpone writting about, then I figured out that I never shared my experience attending FITS which would be too late to write about on a later time as in the next week it begins a new edition of the festival, and then I also had to dedicated a post to Sky who is a kittie that totally stole my and my boyfriends' hearts since the moment we adopted it.

For some, this might sound like an excuse, but for me, it's a serious problem lately dealing with my free time which once was 100% dedicated to the blockchain and was even posting daily for a long while, or at least 2-3 times per week. Now I barely manage to write a single post just because my entire time is dedicated to Sky who came in a perfect time as it ended up making me more responsible and pay more attention to reality and the things that truly matter.

It might sound funny that a 3-month-old tomcat can control your life so much, but since I never had a pet before but always dreamed of one, I fall in love it him more and more with each passing day and I'm always careful with him to not have something missing. Not to mention that recently we found his mother and that he has two more siblings so the overthinking began asking myself if we did a good thing adopting him and always wondering if his family will ever be adopted. Unfortunately, we live in a single room so as much as I wished to reunite the family, it is beyond our means.

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Anyway, as I don't intend to turn this post into an emotional one, I will slowly move to the main topic of today's blog post which shares one of the best trips of my life, because as some of you might know, I've been in a relationship for quite a few years now but only managed to go on a trip in two in the 4th year of our relationship.

This actually came after I won a 1000e voucher on a social media giveaway that I could spend on travels. So while the temptation was big to book 5-6 trips on foreign countries and get to explore some of the foreign countries too, I decided to split it in 3 trips - one for my parents, one for I, my boyfriend and my sister, and one just for my boyfriend and I, which brought us to a place that I first discovered in 2019, but which I promised that I'll return one day, next to my boyfriend.

And that finally happened in the summer of 2022.

So, after a long and exhausting trip from Sibiu to Tulcea (16 hours switching trains), we reached the hotel where we were going to spend the following nights at around 9 PM.
We didn't have too much time or energy to explore the surroundings before heading to sleep, so we went to the closest market to buy some food and then head back to the hotel where we fell asleep quite early because we couldn't rest at all in any of the trains we switched on the way to Tulcea so the zombie mood was quite active, lol.

The next morning began early, with a tasty breakfast provided by the hotel on a terrace from where you could already feel the adventure knocking at the door. So we made sure to fill our stomachs as fast as possible and already head to the docks, in search of the one from where our 12-hour-long boat ride was going to fill the day.

We managed to figure out what the dock was pretty quickly as there was a big panel indicating the name of the agency so after making sure that was the one, we went back to the hotel to grab our backpack and then return to the dock to do the payment and enter the boat.

Unfortunately, the boat was different from what we had back in 2019 when I had a similar boat ride with my family but with a different travel agency where, even if this time the boat felt safer and more luxurious, you could barely enjoy the view while staying inside of it. Happily, the man was kind enough to offer us the best seats that were placed in front of the boat and from where we could see anything.

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However, traveling through a different agency than what I had in 2019 came with both good and bad parts, such as the man from this trip was less dedicated in sharing stories about the surroundings or letting us know about the species of birds we could see all around, while the man from the trip I had with my family was barely making a pause of 5 minutes between stories. This is the easiest way to see which of the two men considered those trips just another job or part of a hobby.

The good part is that on the trip along with my boyfriend, we managed to see more things than I've seen with my family at a way cheaper price. However, there comes another minus because in the bundle we purchased we should be able to pick whether we want to see a shipwreck or not, for which we showed our interest both when we booked our trips but also when we met the driver, but which said that it's enough for that day and decided to rather leave the tourists on a beach for one hour instead of taking us on a ride to the shipwreck too. So this is a good reminder that I should write that feedback for the travel agency one day, lol.

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The boat was filled with all kind of people, from noisy kids to a woman and his dog who both were scared by water and had a panic attack every once in a while, from the disinterested driver to a strange priest who was gossiping to everyone in the boat in turn with his friend. But I'm really happy that God took care of us to enjoy such a beautiful day away from the crowd and where we felt this trip was almost like being just us and the nature.

So along with the endless beauty offered by Danube Delta, we got to see tens of unique species of birds, most of them being able to be noticed just on this part of Europe. Happily, even though the man had no interest in sharing too many details about these, I paid enough attention to the family trip from 2019 from where I remembered lots of details about those species which I could share with my boyfriend too, so I felt like being the guide for that day, haha.

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Danube Delta is the 2nd largest river in Europe, and it crosses no less than 10 countries. However, Romania is blessed to be the one who enjoys this river the most, having the biggest cut of the Danube Delta which is nearly 29%. The next country that enjoys a big slice of this beauty is Hungary with 11,7%, the Republic of Moldova being the one who has the smallest slice, just 1,7%.

As some of you might be aware, Danube Delta is not limited to a single river because it's composed of hundreds of lakes where each has its own name and thing that is famous for. That's how, one of these lakes offered us a great view over one of the most preferred spots by the pelicans that often stop by to take their meal, and another lake brought us in the middle of the jungle with large surfaces entirely covered by waterlilies which even though they were not in bloom, it was still fascinating to get the boat embraced by them.

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After we got our heart filled with new memories and moments of joy discovering nature in many forms, we slowly approached Mila 23 which represented the first stop of the day.

Mila 23 is known as a little town located on a island somewhere at the middle between Tulcea and The Black Sea, which can only be reached with boats and it became more popular after Ivan Patzaichin (who was born at this place) started gathering attention when he became four-time Olympic Champion at canoe sports and the admiral of the golden fleet of Romania in 5 editions of the Olympic Games. This name represents a big honor for Romania and I'm sure that if some of you are passionate about the canoe, you might recognize this man. However, no matter how many titles he won, he never stopped returning to Mila 23 which he refused to leave behind.

This thing slowly turned into something that gathered the attention of the journalists who even though they were only coming by to take Mr Patzaichin an interview, they couldn't act like not being surprised by the beauty of the place. So more and more tourists started booking their rides to see where Mr Patzaichin was born, their actions leading to transforming a small village into a point of interest for the tourists where they can take a break from the ride to enjoy a meal on a floating restaurant, walk in the village, or simply enjoy a tasty drink on the dock that is never empty.

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The locals did a pretty good job decorating the little town with all kinds of interesting spots where tourists can take some pictures, as well as developing small businesses. Hence why, you shouldn't be surprised not to be able to see too many houses on the island, because most of them were turned either into guest houses or restaurants/coffee shops.

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Even though Mila 23 it's a fairly small village with not too many locals, I was happy to see that they have the minimum necessary for a decent living, including shops, a school, church, and some businesses.

However, the difference between guest houses and local houses can easily be noticed due to being a pretty poor village where the single jobs people can have are either at the shops, guesting tourists, or fishing, all activities being almost dead off-season. So I really hope that they will get some investments soon to make those peoples' lives easier and be able to live stress-free off-season too.

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We only had 30 minutes available to spend at Mila 23 before heading to the next stop of the journey, so after taking a quick tour in town we returned to the dock to take some more pictures and enjoy the silence without being surrounded with too many people.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to enjoy a coffee on the floating restaurant, nor taste some of the local cuisine due to the pressure of time, but I was happy that we got to see a bit more of this in comparison with the family trip from 2019 when we only spent like 10 minutes in town with the other travel agency and didn't get to see anything of Mila 23 back then.

Mila 23 is located between Tulcea and The Black Sea, on the Danube Delta river crossing Romania, and it can only be reached by boat being located on the Sulina water arm. Sulina represents another floating town of high interest from Romania but which we will discover more about in the following posts.

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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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