We haven’t had a habit of traveling during October break, but when our friends, the Ashton’s, approached us about doing Transylvania around Halloween, we thought it couldn’t be more perfect. Emma, our literature buff, was torn between going to Transylvania or moving forward with her visit to California. In the end, she chose California and we went the other direction on our first family holiday sans one of our children.
Bucharest
We flew in to Bucharest and chose to stay two nights here so we could have one full day to explore the city before heading out to the countryside.
Bucharest Apartment
Since Chris has been to Bucharest a number of time for work, he went ahead and made plans for a dinner reservation on the night of our arrival. Imagine our surprise when we found the restaurant completely locked up and dark.
No Dinner Tonight
Definitely Locked Up
This wasn’t a great first impression of Bucharest, and I can’t say it got much better. We did enjoy walking around exploring during our one day but we didn’t struggle to get it all in during that time either.
We basically started at one end of downtown and walked to the other, seeing the sites along the main road, Calea Victoriei (“Avenue of Victory”). Most of these sites are part of what is referred to as Revolution Square.
Romanian Atheneum
As we got to each new site, Scott and Chris would get out their different guides and see what we could learn.
Travel “Guides”
We found the Romanian Atheneum is the city’s main concert hall. This was also the place in 1919 where a meeting was held to ratify the unification of smaller countries with the Old Kingdom of Romania to become Greater Romania.
Romanian Poet Mihai Eminescu
King Carol I of Romania
Hannah & Madeleine in front of Odeon
One of the best parts of traveling with friends is that the kids can plop down anywhere to talk, play, or watch. There is usually very little complaining about seeing the sites.
Hand Games
Enjoying the Sun
Cami & Hannah
Scoping out Historic Bucharest
‘Stephash’ Cluster
When kids started to get a little whiny, a quick stop into a gelato shop was a quick fix (even for adults).
Gelato Flavor
We may have visited this gelato shop a couple times in the one day we were in Bucharest.
We were quite surprised by the amount of graffiti in the city.
Graffiti, Graffiti, & More Graffiti
Musical Graffiti
As we neared the end of the Revolution Square, we came upon the Memorial of Rebirth. It commemorates the struggles and victims of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which overthrew Communism. It’s amazing to think that it really wasn’t that long ago.
Memorial of Rebirth
Names of Victims
Our final stop at the end of Calea Victoriei was the massive Palace of Parliament, which is the second largest administrative building in the world – after the Pentagon. It has twelve stories, four underground levels (including a nuclear bunker), a 100 m. long lobby and 1100 rooms.
Palace of Parliament
We were able to take an hour long tour inside. When we were finished, the tour guide told us we had only seen 5% of the building. That’s amazing!
View from Parliament Balcony
Family at Parliament Building
Patient Children
We tended to have a lot of down time in the Parliament Building. The guide would instruct us for a bit, give us time to look around, and then we’d move on. We had even more time when we went out on the balcony. To keep the kids occupied, Chris introduced them to panoramic picture fun.
Chris, Trevon, Caleb, AND CHRIS?!
The kids had so much fun with the new concept that on our walk back through the city, we had to stop and experiment some more.
Chris and His Twin
Twins Creating Havoc with Trevor & Caleb
Chris seemed to have the most fun with it and kept coming up with new ideas.
Chris vs. Chris
It was an interesting day exploring Bucharest, but we were ready to move on to our next adventure, in Brasov. However, looking at the weather forecast for the end of the week, we were a little nervous that we had come unprepared.
Snow & Cold in the Forecast
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