Speed Dating Bucharest

Bucharest, Romania

Grand Bucharest. View over the city from the Parliament Building

By this time, we felt we were speed dating Romania.  Short sharp stops and if we didn’t take notes, lots would be forgotten (or even forgiven…specifically, weather & trains). 

 

After arriving in Bucharest, Romania's capital, we took an extended tour of the grand Parliament Palace, the “Ceausima”.  With claims of being the second largest building in the world (not by a long shot now), it does have a massive footprint - 12 storeys, 1100 rooms and 4 vast underground bunkers. 

 

There are crystal chandeliers by the bucket load – all weighing in the tons, metres of expensive curtains and carpets, oak panelling, grand marble staircases, delicate mosaics and acres of gold leaf.  Only some 20 years old it is already crumbling (large cracks euphemistically referred to as expansion joints).  All this built in the time of communism; now simply a monument to one man’s excess when millions starved. 

Cismigui Park (1854) from the Boathouse Cafe

Free to enjoy the afternoon, we stopped for a local beer (Ciuc, pronounced chook) in the park just opposite our hotel, the historic Cismigiu Park (1845), a botanical garden of sorts.  It’s well used – by those on first dates (a row around the lake), a place to meet friends (by the black swans) and a hangout for old men engrossed in their board games.  Then it was on to dinner in the old town area at Caru’ cu Bere (Beer Wagon) a famous establishment with painted walls & ceilings and lavish woodwork.  It was exceptionally grand and very busy with apparently little time for tourists.  We tipped accordingly....

The next morning, our impressions of dour Bucharest citizens were reversed after meeting Mihai.  So began our very interesting tour of the Old Town of Bucharest.  We’ve since been trying to map this walk without success as we darted into side streets, disappeared into old churches, wandered into covered walkways (smelling of the previous evening’s hookah pipes - argyleh) and found large sculptures and monasteries in the most amazing places. The caravanserai was not yet open and the dancing ladies of the night had retired by this early hour.  Bucharest was once considered “Little Paris” and we could see why; many of the secessionist buildings were extremely beautiful.  December 1989 saw the Revolution sweep away communist power but concrete apartment blocks, pot holed roads and even bullet holes in walls remain. 

 

Here is a short photo hop of our tour (names added when we work out what was what):

Fresco inside the Old Court Church (1554)

 

Church of the Stavropoleos Monastery (1724)



Needless to say, we were not short of luscious cakes & pastries!

Stunning embroidered shirts &clothing for sale

Flowers for sale everywhere

Of course, deep in the back streets of the old town, we found Dracula again...  Well, Vlad and his Princely Court.  Showing us his softer side, Mihai gave us a demo of impaling.  Needless to say, the Aussies had to take it one step further.