First walk of the new year 2023. Happy New Year and Happy Walking, you Walkers! I don't know if that sounds good in English, I hope the meaning is understandable...
The first walk of the year had a few special features for me. Sticking to the first day of the year, this sunny winter day (?) also marked my birthday and was the warmest winter day measured so far in Romania.
My birthday coming so soon after the beginning of the new year, after the celebration of the new year, has always been a hard challenge both for me and for my relatives and friends, all very tired from preparations, parties, and lots of food. They were all mad at my mother for giving birth to me so soon after the new year, but she, I don't think, had a choice. I thank her and remember her fondly...
As the years went by, relatives and friends gave up, couldn't and didn't come to congratulate me, so I celebrated my birthday more and more alone but, of course, with my family. This year was a novelty because a good friend invited us for a walk. At first, I didn't like the idea but then I got more and more excited about such a "party".
When I walk around, if not in a park then in the central part of Bucharest, looking for old streets and buildings that make me think and imagine the city of a century ago. At the same time, I like to look at the joining, in the same landscape, of buildings from different eras, those that break, I think I can say, the monotony!
This is Victory Square, a square with many exits in attractive directions, the starting point of Victory Avenue, my favorite, and other major city avenues.
Most of the town was asleep or resting and, of course, a lot of people were away celebrating the New Year.
The pleasure of seeing the town deserted was unbearable. A rare occasion!
Our favorite café was closed, as most were, the only one that was working was crowded and overcrowded... We chose to drink coffee to go and watch the rare passersby on Victory Avenue.
Normally I would have chosen to walk along Victory Avenue but, fortunately, this time I changed to an avenue that led in the opposite direction, Kiseleff Road, towards the greener part of the city, crossing the wealthy neighborhoods, where the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie lived in the last century, those who built the district, then the communist "aristocracy" who took the houses of the previous ones by force, and now the rich capitalists who bought the houses from the communist descendants. People have passed... the houses are left!
We had to cross Victory Square, dominated by the Romanian Government building.
Right at the beginning of Kiseleff Road, there are three important museums. The most popular museum, especially for children, is the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History.
The Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History is a museum in Bucharest, located at 1, Kiseleff Road. The museum's heritage consists of more than 2 million pieces, grouped into different zoological, paleontological, mineral, rock, and ethnographic collections.
It is the only museum where you have to queue to visit.
Next, we see the Museum of the Roman Peasant, a famous and award-winning museum for its collections but which has been under renovation for several years. The museum building dates from 1940 and is very beautiful, in my opinion. The tower with its gazebo and colorful tile roof is my favorite.
The building is imposing and hard to frame in the photo, I had to go opposite, where the third museum is, the Geological Museum, to fit the whole building in the picture. Approaching the Geological Museum I had a big surprise, being greeted by a... small dinosaur!
The National Geological Museum is a museum in Bucharest located on Kiseleff Road, near Victoriei Square and Kiseleff Park.
The National Geological Museum was opened to the public in 1990, in the building of the Geological Institute of Romania, built in 1906.
The permanent exhibition consists of 14 core exhibits and contains about 7,700 exhibits out of a total of 70,000 in the museum's scientific collections.
Another building like they don't make anymore. This is a museum that I have wanted to visit for a long time and even though it is easy for me to get there, I still haven't succeeded.
In this museum can be seen "an impressive collection of "mine flowers", but also the most complete collection of rocks and fossils in Romania, extraordinary reconstructions of large vertebrates found in geological strata throughout Romania, including several life-size dinosaurs discovered in the Hațeg region". Moreover, this is a museum with a sale, meaning that various minerals, semi-precious stones, and even small fossils can be bought. I promise to visit it soon and make a more complete presentation.
I think I read somewhere that this egg that looks like a modern sculpture in front of the museum is actually a petrified dinosaur egg! This is also where I saw the explanation for being greeted by a dinosaur. In the garden and at the entrance to the museum are several dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, built life-size and animated.
Interesting this union of museums at the beginning of this Kiseleff Road. For those who stroll around, remains the pleasure of admiring the buildings of these museums, two of them built at the beginning of the last century and the third in 1940. I love that these two museums are facing each other and I leave this walk looking at them once again!
Walk done for #WednesdayWalk, a community of walkers owned by 
