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| The Romanian Parliament. |
Bucharest is the capital and largest city of Romania. From what other Romania's had told us it didn't have a great deal to offer in terms of attractions but we were keen to check it out. We didn't research it at all other then finding some accommodation and the airport since we were flying from here out to Munich - Germany, so we didn't have many expectations.
Our AirBnB was a newly renovated apartment close to the city centre. Our host had a ripper email with detailed instructions to help us get from the main train station via the metro to the apartment. The beauty of this apartment was that we didn't need to meet the host, we were supplied a pin for access to the apartment via a keypad. This was by far the best and easiest method for access to an Airbnb we've had!
The apartment was fully self contained and basically brand new! They had supplied coffee for an espresso machine, tea, waffles for breakfast and a couple of bottles of wine! After a big couple of days driving around the country we were so happy to have some tucker supplied and such a comfortable space.
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| After settling into the apartment - straight onto Tripadvisor for the top cheap restaurants and thankfully it was a burger place called - Burger Van Bistro! Geez we love these little trendy burger places. They always have ripper food and local craft beer. Cost was 27AUD |
Our AirBnB hosts were keen to take us out for lunch on our first real day here so we took them up on their offer and met them at a traditional Romaina restaurant/beer hall. They were keen to meet up with us for feedback on their apartment since they had only just started the AirBnB thing. We had a good hour chatting to them about traveling and our experience with AirBnB. They were a young couple who had successfully started a large online flower delivery business over the past 10 years and were starting to look for other investment methods (via. property and AirBnB).
Caru cu bere was a pretty spectacular building. Our meal, coupled with a few local beers, was spot on and one of the highlights of Bucharest! Cost was a respectable 33AUD.
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| This impressive building is the CEC Palace, just an example of the architecture in the city. |
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| Overcast and a little chilly - Bucharest features pretty impressive architecture earning its nickname "Little Paris" in-between the period of WW1 and WW2. |
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| Stavropoleos Monastery dating back to 1724 really stands out in the centre of the old town. Its significantly smaller then its surrounding buildings because it survived a massive fire in 1847 which destroyed the majority of the old city and the communist period. |
Wandering around the old town with what seemed like the majority to be locals. Plenty of pubs, clubs and restaurants. It really didn't have much of a touristy feel which we liked. Bucharest was the original residence of our old mate, the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler back in the 1400's, burnt down a few times by the Ottoman's and destroyed by natural disasters. It wasn't until 1860 that it became the capital of Romania. It played a role in both WWI and WWII, before falling into a crazy communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu from 1965 to 1989 who demolished a lot of the historic buildings and replaced them with typical communist buildings.
Our third day took us to THE PARLIAMENT BUILDING.
Originally called "House of the Republic" now, "House of the People", this is the worlds largest and heaviest civilian building with administrative function. Built as a symbol of power and wealth in Romania, the project was never fully complete thus only a small part of the building can be visited by tourists.
1100 rooms, 12 stories tall, 2 undergrounds parking garages, 86m high and 92m underground!!! 340,000m2 of floor space. Some 200 architects and 20,000 workers worked around the clock to build this hooer!
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| View overlooking the building and back towards the city centre. Source touristinromaina.net. |
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| There were a tonne of tours on offer between English, underground, upper level and standard tours ranging from an hour and a half to three hours. From what people had said on Tripadvisor we only wanted to do the standard tour which showed a couple of main parts of the building, and gave us some communist history etc. Cost 23AUD. |
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| One of 480 chandlers, this is the biggest at 5000kg. |
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| There was hallway, after hallway that looked like this! |
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| These marble stair cases were re-modled three times during their construction until Nicolae was happy with their size and step-profile. There was an identical stair case on the opposite side of the hall for his wife. The plan was that during meetings or parties, Nicolae and his wife would present themselves to the party down each stair case in a powerful gesture. |
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| One of the main halls, featuring plenty of pure gold trimmings. All the finished rooms are for rent, and this hall was rented by famous Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci (first gymnast to score perfect 10's in the olympics), for her wedding. |
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| Views from outside the main balcony looking down communist built Unirii Boulevard - the streets were designed to be 1m wider then the Champs Elysees in Paris. This building was insane! It was so interesting to be able to experience such a significant place. In 1992, Michael Jackson stood on this balcony and addressed the crowd saying "Hello Budapest!" |
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| A size comparison for this marble column. |
To build the palace, a historic neighbourhood was demolished including 28 churches (8 of which were relocated), and 30,000 people were forced out of their homes to make room for the construction.
The whole tour and experience was mind-blowing. A country which was so poor had so much labour and natural resources thrown at this place. Nicolae Ceausescu spend 40% of the countries GDP constructing and it was inspired by North Korea's Kim Jong II.
Currently the Palace of Parliament hosts the Senate and The Chamber of Deputies. There are a couple of rooms which have been turned into cinemas, and a section of the underground area is used by the military.
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