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Bucharest, Romania
44° 26' N 26° 6' E
Apr 20, 2008 18:53
Distance 0km

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Other entries in Bucharest

Beer in plastic bottles and other bad ideas

Text written in: English

We actually got up at a decent time to a decently empty hostel. Quite a few people had taken the tour to Brasov at 8am so we had a leisurely breakfast and made plans to go into the city. Our breakfastmates Nick the Australian and James the Canadian invited themselves to go along with us happily enough. Yay for boys! We headed off around 10:30 figuring we'd just wander through the city hitting some of the sites along the way. We wandered down the bleak, quiet streets intending to walk all the way to the southern part of the city with stops at the more notable places along the way. We didn't bother going by the Arc de Triumph that is similar to the one in Paris because it's completely encased in scaffolding although still pretty. There was some story about lights that seem never to make it onto the monument...something like that. The Romanian Atheneum which is the main concert hall was a beautiful building. It stand just opposite the Royal Palace which houses the National Art Museum. None of us were big museum people so we kept walking. We wandered all the way down to 'old town' and Curtea Veche, the oldest church in Bucharest. It's also known for being tied to Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula. Wandering evern further south we finally stopped at the Parliament Palace, supposedly the 2nd largest administration building in the world. It IS incredibly huge. All-in-all it's still a very Soviet-esque city. There are some beautiful patches but it's smaller, more spread out and not as developed at Budapest, or Paris for example. 

Tired, hot, and parched we wandered halfway back to the hostel and found an older, comfortable bar called City Pub where we ordered Tuborg beers and some food. We had pretty much decided we were done with Bucharest. I'm sure there was more to see, things we missed, but I'll let you fine people figure out what that was should ever you go. We made plans to hit the grocery store across the street from the hostel for beer and to continue our drinking on the comfortable patio. We planted ourselves in patio chairs at 5pm and that's where we stayed until almost 3am. It was SUCH a fun night. So much talking and laughing...we ordered pizza and drank our way through three 2-liter plastic bottles of beer. One bottle was partly shaped like a soccer ball and I really think American should pick up on these. It was so very cheap and so very good. Simone, Puiu, Joachim, and random others joined us. Joachim made us laugh every single time he'd say, "That's some crazy sheet" in his French accent, and in general it was a nice, safe(Hi Mom!), fun evening.