After a very easy and quick experience at Vodafone we have 2 SIM cards for less than $20 and head off to University Square to meet Dana, our Urban Adventures tour guide for the private tour of non-touristic neighbourhoods (mahallas). Bucharest has an eclectic mix of Islam, Turkish, French, Roman, Romanian, and communist Russian architecture styles. This reminds us of Buenos Aires, which has, similarly a mix of various styles, one abutted next to another. We learned some history, including the much-worse-than-any-Dracula-tale description of how Vlad the Impaler earned his name. Can I just say “yuck” and leave it at that?
Houses that were appropriated by he communist regimewereidentified by an I.A.L. plate, like this one.
And this one is meant to look like a ship, with portholes and a bow.
At the National Theatre, there’s an interesting group statue, representing well-known characters of Ion Luca Caragiale's works,a former romanian writer. The author, himself is depicted and the theatre roof is said to have been designed to be reminiscent of his favourite hat style.
During the communist era, when many buildings were destroyed to be replaced by typical communist apartments, one wealthy family had a portion of their house demolished and moved the historic church 50 meters on rails to his property, causing no structural damage. Very ornate inside.
In addition to the history and culture lesson, we enjoyed food and beer in Bucharest’s version of a ruin bar (of which we will see more in Budapest)
It’s not warm, but the weather was lovely and we had a great first day exploring Bucharest.
This featured blog entry was written by Deb Godley from the blog Deb Travels the World.
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