Checking out Bucharest.....

Bucharest turns out to be a very modern city of around 2 million people.....with a lot of great buildings from prior to Communist rule!

Our morning outing....... visiting the now Parliament building (with FBI and CIA bureaus supposedly also within the building!). This was what got Ceausescu into trouble..finally.  Too big, too much marble, too much silk etc etc........while the ordinary person had nothing!

It is huge! Lots of exceptionally large conference rooms and amazing corridors....

And tons of marble  used!

View from the balcony.....

It was incredible that this one man could build something like this while his country was starving. It has 11 floors, a few floors before reaching the actual ground floor. 40,000 people were displaced so that he could clear the area for his 'folly'!! 

A fountain boulevard leads to it......with communist elite apartments flanking both sides...now privately owned!

The city had many interesting buildings.....

An Arc de Triomphe!

Their department store modeled on the Galleries Lafayette in Paris......

This old building had a fire so they kept the facade and built a glass hotel behind it!

This started life as a stables for King Carol's horses........now a concert hall...

The Royal Palace.....now has two Art museums.....

A lot of early religious art......

This I thought was very nice....

Lunch at Caru'cu Bere was interesting...it looked as though an old church had been converted....however it was built as a restaurant in the 18 hundreds.......

We also visited a very unusual dinner venue, the Great Hill. wine bar........the focus is on wine, which was great! They have turned their private residence into a marketing place for select wines from a specific area of Romania.

Interesting art .....also for sale!