Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Bumbling Around Bucharest

Four Days of Wandering and Exploring 

Romanian City of Bucharest



June 15, 2016

Oh the glories of sleeping in a bed, with sheets and comforter....having a marvelous breakfast at 11:00 o'clock....in a splendid hotel....in a brand new country...Romania. We walked to the bus, took a ride around the city, stopped in the Old Town, wandered and wandered and wandered. Becky discovered an old monastery, Stavropoleos Monastery and Orthodox Church built in the early 1700's right in the middle of Old Town.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavropoleos_Monastery)




The temperature is in the upper 80's and we have to stop and get something to drink...Explorer's Irish Pub...a beer and a plan...another beer and a better plan...another beer and what plan??? Sitting on the main street outside enjoying the shade and people watching. Our wait person was friendly, helpful and very cute. Wifi is everywhere........
Even though we have a difficult time every time we try getting on wifi.





We discussed the very positive aspects of Bucharest. Beautiful wide streets, loads of traffic, many preserved older buildings, a lot of large buildings, many blocks of government housing, lots of graffiti, very attractive people, great looking shops, lots of people walking/strolling, families, quite a few gay gathering spots and a large amount of very good looking restaurants.




Arch d' Triumph -- honoring Romanians lost in WWI




Beautiful older homes/buildings



Grafitti
 .




This building was called Stalin Communist Buiding, built by locals and housed the controlled \press. Today it houses the Freepress and all newspapers

The restaurant we chose for dinner: The Red Angus Steakhouse! recommended by the  Marriott and our travel people located in the Old Town. We sat next to Vlad the Impalers' home (also known as Dracula) A large statue of him stared at us as we drank our Prosecco and ate marvelous rib eye steaks from Australia! Our wait person was terrific and interested in what we thought Romania, as we continued to praise what we had seen, he was obviously pleased but he did tell us that there was much corruption within the government. He also informed us that there were very few if any refugees in Romania.


    

Even after all of this wandering we still had not achieved our 10,000 steps -- if you can believe it.  So we walked "home" using the maps feature on the iPhone, with Beth using her exceptional navigational skills.

Total steps taken for today:  11,891

      

            


Tomorrow is now Yesterday

Amsterdam and Bucharest

We've been thru umpteen time zones. We've travelled 24 hours from Becky's door to hotel in Bucharest. We had a 5 hour layover in Amsterdam where it poured rain the whole time. 





Amsterdam, Netherlands

Pouring rain in Amsterdam, making us feel welcome and at home. Little did we know that our luggage was sitting out in the rain for the 5 hour lay over. When we opened our suitcases, everything a damp or sopping wet!




Bucharest, Romania








The shuttle from airport to the Marriott hotel in Bucharest was at least 1 hour due to traffic.


 We can hardly wait to go to sleep. We have not seen any of the refugees. Today is 14 June and we're pretending to be awake during the early evening in the JW Marriott overlooking the Parliament Building. We could not go to sleep until we opened our luggage and distributed our wet clothing over the room to begin drying. Out our window, Across from the Marriott, the Palace Parliament where we will have dinner on Thursday June 16.