Bucharest, Romania – Travel Photography

Upon arriving in Bucharest, I could tell that Romania was to become a new favorite country and it pained me that we only had 4 days.  I know now that we MUST go back, absolutely!  For two days, we wandered around Bucharest, marveling at the amazing architecture and eating some damn good food!
We started with the historic part of town.  Here is the university:

You can find pedestrian streets with tons of restaurants and bars.

Our couchsurfing hosts recommended that we eat at this restaurant – Caru’ cu Bere.  Housed in a beautiful building, this restaurant has been around since 1879.  The hostesses and waiters are dressed in traditional outfits and all of the food is traditional homemade recipes.  The food was so incredible! I got minced meat stuffed in cabbage with sauerkraut and polenta.  Never realized it before but polenta is basically grits.  So I was a happy girl.  And they eat it with sour cream, who knew sour cream on grits would be like the best thing ever?  Then we got this delicious dessert called papanasi, a doughnut covered in blueberry sauce topped with sour cream and sugar, AMAZING! We loved the food so much we went back the next day and ordered the same thing.

This is the view around the Parliament building, which Ill explain later. We got there too late to go in so we had to go the next day.

Then we went to this village museum that our hosts recommended.  It was a really interesting place – they had traditional houses from all the little villages in Romania, completely decorated in the interiors too.  But what frustrated me is that most of them were locked so you couldn’t see inside many of them.  Still it was cool to walk around and see all the cottages – Melissa – I now have many ideas for OURS.

If all this adorable village-ness peaks your interest, then check out our hosts’ non profit organization, Village Life.  Her goal is to promote the development and preservation of rural communities in Romania through tourism.  Village families will host you and teach you how they live – activities might include beekeeping, milking a cow or goat, making cheese, collecting medicinal plants, building furniture, etc.  You can also explore the surrounding landscape.  Its super affordable – about 20 euros a day for lodging and meals.  I really really regret not having the time to go for a day! This is why we MUST go back to Romania! Please check out our friends website and help spread the word!

Here is the Parliament building – this thing is nuts.  Back in the 80’s, under the communist regime, Ceauşescu had this obnoxiously large building made and nearly bankrupted the country.  You can read more about it on the travel blog.  But basically at the time, he bulldozed one sixth of the city to build this sucker and its the second largest building in the world.  We did a tour and only covered 3% of it.  After they killed Ceauşescu, the people wanted to destroy it but it wouldve been more expensive to blow it up then to just finish it.  I wasnt allowed to take photos inside but I sneaked a couple.  Definitely check this place out online because its crazy lavish.

A russian church.

If youre interest in Romania is peaked, just wait for the next 2 posts – cute little towns with CASTLES! My favorite!