The Romanian capital

No breakfast was supplied at our hotel so we had some fruit and muesli.  I was in a rush to get going.  My brain wasn’t functioning and I kept thinking we had to be at the free walking tour at 1000 when it was in fact 1030 at the central city park about 20 minutes away.  Once we had located the meeting point, we had a cuppa at McDonald’s nearby.

There was a large crowd for the tour and we were split into two groups.  We were shown around the old city and heard a little about the history. Memorable bits included:

• How many people, including Michael Jackson, mistake Bucharest for Budapest.
• Vlad the impaler, the ruler who put people to death slowly through impalement (starting at the bottom end).
• The old caravanserai, Manuc’s Inn, which is now a lovely restaurant.
• How 13 churches were saved by shifting them on a concrete base using tracks and locomotives, when Ceausescu wanted them demolished for the boulevards and the palace.
• The beautiful beer hall, Caru’ cu Bere (literally  “The beer wagon”) .

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It was hot during the walking tour and I hesitated each time I needed a drink. It was the conditioning after having been in Iran for two weeks during Ramadhan.  And, it felt strange (but nice) wearing shorts!

We left about 20 minutes before the end of the walking tour to taxi to the Parliament Palace for our pre-booked 1300 tour.  We had our passports with us but there was no dress code requirements, with me in shorts.  There was a fee of RON35 pp and an additional fee of a similar magnitude for cameras but smartphones are free.  So we took the free option.

After security we commenced the guided tour of the lower floors.  We were told that the tour would take us to only 3% of the building.  Much of the building lies underground (complete with tunnels) and it is like an iceberg in that respect.

The rooms and corridors that we were shown were all huge and very intricately decorated with styles from a bygone era. It’s hard to believe that this was a 20^th Century building.

All this came at great cost to the country and was all to feed his ego; eg. balcony to wave to the masses, a room with lots of echo to amplify applause.

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From the Parliament, we taxied to the National Theatre for the next walking tour.  This didn’t happen as I think we had an old map with old times.  Fortunately, our hotel was very near and we returned for our rest.

I continued where I had left off last night with our bus/train plans for the region.  By the end of the day I had everything sorted, except one hop which I had decided to leave as unbooked (since the best option was by maxi-taxi).

Since we had a very light lunch of a shared sandwich, we had an early dinner.  In old town, we found a place which we liked an ordered a sausage/kebab combo with a salad washed down with the local Ciuc beer.  It was a good first full day in Bucharest and Romania.