Romania

Monday (1 May) also a bank holiday in Romania, we walked via Bucharest old town to the Palace of Parliament, the second largest government building in the world, it is huge, and second only to the US Pentagon, a legacy of the Ceausescu years.

The Palace of Parliament looks down a long wide boulevard with fountains down the middle of the road, ending in a large fountain in the middle of a roundabout.

Tuesday, we got a Bolt to the National Village Museum, a collection of houses and buildings, moved from all over the country to be preserved, the museum started in the 1930’s. It shows very different styles of houses, from half buried houses to large wooden thatched cottages. A really interesting museum, we spend a couple of hours wandering around.

We then moved on to Herastra Park, we have no idea why but there is a monument to Micheal Jackson. There is also an Arch de Triomphe, gifted to Romania by France for their support in World War I.

We then returned to the old town to visit the Stravropoleas Monastery.

Wednesday, we walked to the Romanian Athenaeum, which looked like the Pantheon in Rome. We then went to the National Art Gallery, expecting to pay for entry, but were handed free tickets when we entered, as far as we could work out they do one free day a month and today happened to be that day, Result!

A national art gallery with no cafe! So we had to leave to find one, the “Artichoke Social House”, nice coffee. We decided not to return the Gallery and walked back towards the old town again, via the park.

After a little more wandering we stopped for a drink, Rog found honey crust beer, the glass was topped with honey and sugar!!

Thursday, we checked out of the AirBnB and headed to the station, we knew which train we wanted and the fact that we needed to reserve seats, So Rog join a queue in the ticket hall and managed to get seat reservations for all the Romanian trains we needed over the next few weeks. A seat reservation cost £0.90 for each each one, happy days!

We took a 3 hour train to Craiovo, we had never heard of the place, but it was on the train line in the general direction we wanted to travel.

We stayed in the Hotel Meliss, a very strange hotel, at first we thought we were the only guests, as we sat in a large function room, at a table for 8, for dinner with nobody else around. There were a couple more people at breakfast, but that was it.

Friday, a morning train to Caransebes, and a short walk to the Vila Palace hotel, a nice little hotel which is obviously used by the locals as a party/wedding venue, in fact we were informed of a party that night, so a disco until midnight, they put us in the rooms furthest anyway so it was not a problem.

We walked into Caransebes, a non touristy town, had a couple of drinks and dinner, which was £32 for the three of us! Not sure if they missed something off the bill, and we didn’t get one to check we were just told the amount, so we paid what we’re were asked for and got a taxi back to the hotel.

Saturday morning, after breakfast Rog was going to have a shower, but we had no water in the room, So Nic headed down to reception, who were mortified that the workmen had turned the water off and ran to get it put back on!!

Walked back towards the station, stopped for coffee in a local cafe, Nic also ordered Beef soup, which turned out to be one course of a three course lunch which then arrived!! Rog had to eat the dessert of pancakes to help out.

Our train was to Timisoara Nord, with only 14 minutes to transfer on to a second train to Oradea. Given our experience so far is that Romanian train timetables appear to be more of a suggestion rather than a schedule, anything could have happened, however we made the connection, with Rog asking the train driver if we were about to get on the correct train. There were no train or platform numbers to be seen at the station.

We arrived in Oradea, a Bolt into town and checked into another lovely AirBnB.

Had a couple of drinks in a wine bar, close to the AirBnB.

Sunday, we visited the synagogue, walked through a park towards the Fortress, however they were lots of road works, but we persevered, finally got to the fortress and there was a street food festival, so we had lunch!

Walked along the river back into town, and the same wine bar as last night and had more wine! Plus sharing boards and focaccia sandwiches. All local Romanian wines and all good!