Romania Series: Murighiol; Mud Baths and Gratars

After a morning of cruising and bird watching we went back to the pensiune for a lunch of fish soup, it was not very tasty--gross actually. Once we were finished with our so-called lunch we headed to the mud baths of Murighiol. They are located at a pond just outside of town and are free--nice.

Fish soup, yuck!

The mud in this area is famous for soothing rheumatism. I heard during tourist season you can see people all over the Black Sea coast basking in the sun while covered with the deep, dark mud. It was a little chilly out, so I was fairly skeptical about slathering wet mud all over my body. Once we were there though I could not resist. The mud was very dark in color and was very fine with very few chunks of organic matter mixed in. Therefore, it was nice and smooth as I rubbed it onto my skin. It felt very soothing and as it dried it warmed me up which was a very pleasant experience. I'm very glad I got the opportunity to roll around in the mud during my trip and highly recommend it if you visit the delta area.

Muddy feet with the mud pond in the background

Covered in mud

Once we had rinsed all the mud off our soothed bodies and redressed we headed back to town where we stopped by the store and bought a multitude of pork products. We then headed down to the beach for a gratar. Gratars are pretty much like our barbecues and it's a favorite with Romanians because they love, love, love meat. Generally speaking, they pretty much eat it with every meal.

As with a traditional U.S. BBQ, drinking is the norm during a gratar. We had some beer, but Pălincă is the local favorite--a traditional brandy made in both Hungary and Romania. I tried a bit of the plumb and apricot varieties, too strong for my simple palate. For dinner we had pork three ways. We had some yummy pork chops, some pork sausage links, and some mich, which i'm not sure if I'm spelling correctly, but it's a traditional pork product that is served all over Romania and people seem to love it. All of the pork we had at the gratar was very tastey, much better than our earlier lunch of fish soup.

At the gratar.