After an excellent meal of Mici (“skinless” sausages which are a traditional Romanian dish) and regular sausages, we group up at the hotel for Communist Bucharest tour. We see a lot of the same sights as this morning, as we drive up and through the Primavera neighborhood to reach Ceausescu’s Mansion. Here, we tour the home where the Ceausescu’s lived for 25 years – learning a little more about the family (the 3 children – 1 of whom is still alive today) and how the dictator and his wife lived in luxury while everyone suffered. The double standard is even more apparent here than in the Parliament Palace.
Offices and bedrooms are decorated with expensive woods, wallpaper and gold trims. Crystal and marble everywhere. A winter garden and a tiled indoor pool! If we didn’t know better, we’d think Ceausescu visited The Biltmore for ideas! There is also Elena’s closet which rivals Imelda Marcos’ with the hundreds of shoes and matching outfits to go with them. there is the weight room, the exercise and spa rooms (which have apparatus that look more like torture chambers than spa to us!). Amazing.
Outside, in the courtyard there are even peacocks which, once the idiot tourist (not with our group) stops scaring them and making them run away), we amuse ourselves for a bit by watching them strut around. It’s a fascinating study in the double standards of the time: Everyone was equal, some were just more equal than others!
Back on the bus, back to the hotel. Dinner is on our own tonight and we are going to Caru’ cu Bere, Beer Cart in Romanian. We had researched the restaurant before we left, and then Cristina recommended it to everyone for dinner, making it an even better choice! But first we decide to walk around the old town and go to the Princely Church and more particularly, the ruins of the palace built by Vlad the Impaler (nee Dracula – that story will come later on in the trip)! We saunter off through old town, and into the crowds – it is definitely a lively city! Winding our way past construction that precludes us from seeing the ruins of Dracula’s palace (they are restoring it so all we get is a picture of the scaffolding holding it all up), we arrive at the church, which was founded in 1559 and built in a neo-Gothic style with Wallachian religious icons and brick. (We are in the province of Wallachia, FYI). The exterior is beautiful and the interior looks lovely as well, but there is a wedding going on, and we don’t feel comfortable walking inside during the ceremony.
Circling back to the restaurant, we pass beautiful old buildings, another church and a stately grey stone building that turns out was once a hospital in 1914. It is part of the French influence on architecture seen throughout the city (again, we’ll learn more about that throughout our time in Bucharest!). Old town is actually fairly small and contained, so it’s easy to walk to and fro, and the restaurant is a quick trip. It’s crazy packed, and we consider ourselves lucky to get a table for two outside on the patio. While we wait for our drinks and dinner of Ciorba de Perisoare (Romanian Meatball soup) and Mititei (little mici) for Ed and Ciuperci Umplute cu Legume (mushrooms stuffed with vegetables) for me, I run down the street to take some photos of the CEC Bank headquarters building which is an awesome piece of architecture – that only improves as the darkness of evening descends!
Dinner done, we stroll back along the busy city streets – passing the “Handsome Monk Coffee” house – definitely one of the more creative names we’ve seen (although Machu Pizza – an ad we saw on a bus - might be the winner) – then on past the restaurant with the sort of interesting, sort of creepy mannequins set up at tables and along a little wooden bridge at the entrance (Definitely on our list to try when we return to Bucharest – how could we not?), to the market and back to the hotel to pack for our early morning departure for Transylvania.
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