✈EARLY SUMMER ROAD TRIP 3/5: BUCHAREST

Once I was done with Ferrara, I moved on to Bucharest, thanks to a 20€ Ryan Air flight. I had always wanted to visit this city, and I was not disappointed. It had everything to amaze me.

After settling down in my new hostel in the city center, I started immediately to investigate the avenues and streets around and was greeted by some of the most amazing architecture I have seen in a long time for individual houses.

No wonder that Bucharest is nicknamed "Little Paris", the French Architecture influence is absolutely everywhere in the city center, especially in the big official builds.

^{Colțea Hospital}

^{Palace of the Deposits and Consignments}

^{Biblioteca Central de la Universidad de Bucarest}

And they even have their own triumphal arch in remembrance of the first world war:

However, sometimes, you might cross some street where you would think that it has just been shelled by an artillery fire, that's how the contrasts of Bucharest work:

Even if sometimes, they find just the right architect to transform the old and bring up the new:

I just spent three nights in Bucharest but i made a point to walk all of them. I heard that Bucharest is actually BIGGER than Paris (even if there are less population) and that's probably true, the capital is criss crossed by huge avenues.

But all this walking around was just a preparation for the "plat de résistance", the Palace of the Parliament, that huge extraordinary, pharoanic, biblical (insert here your own grandiloquent adjective) monument started by Ceausescu in the 1980s, and which is second in size only to the US Pentagon (according the guide).

^H-U-G-E

^{Side view}

^{Close up}

In the visit, we covered maybe only 5% of the whole building (there are more than a 1000 rooms in that palace, so imagine the time one needs to visit it all!) but it was enough.

^{View from the balcony}

It's simply breathtaking and much more elegant than what one would expect from a megalomaniac communist madman.

^{That carpet rolled up in the right side corner? It weighs 7 tons and need 30 men to be rolled out.}

Of course, Bucharest is peppered also with some lovely little churches which are open to everyone:

^{Stavropoleos Monastery Church}

^{Stavropoleos Monastery Church}

^{Stavropoleos Monastery Church}

^{Biserica Sfântul Anton}

All this walking around of course made me very hungry and thirsty and I enjoyed a lot of good food around. Of course, I visited the Cara'cu Bere, the traditional transylvanian hostelery which caters to tourists as well as locals, and is a feast for the eyes as much as for the mouth:

^{The terrace}

It proved slightly better than the Manuc Inn, the old inn founded in the XVIIIth century by an Armenian merchant, which is still a hit with the tourists. It was cheap, rather good, but its interior terrace is probably the best after a long day:

^{Manuc Inn outside}

^{Manuc Inn inside}

^{Menu du Jour!}

And the best thing is that the suburbs are scattered with fancy bars and terraces where to have beers and tasty food, like the M60:

^ggg

But it's really in the Diana 4 that I enjoyed myself the most, with a couple of lemonades and beers and some light reading:

^ggg

At the end of three days, it was time for me again to pack up my things and head for the airport, to reach my (almost) final and original goal: CYPRUS.

^{Multumesc Bucuresti!}