A Morning Exploration around Central Bucharest
Miles to Bucharest
The morning cometh. And no, I’m not sleeping in and catching an Uber back to the airport. Where’s the fun in that?
I’m in a new city. It’s time to explore The Old Town, some sights and get lost on a metro line.
In this adventure
- The Last Gasp of Silver (or British Airways did us all dirty)
- Off to Heathrow and the wonder of Terminal 3
- Lounging around Terminal 3 with Cathay Pacific and Qantas
- BA886 London Heathrow to Bucharest Henri Coandă (Club Europe)
- Exiting Bucharest Henri Coandă Airport and into the City – Of Trains and Trams
- The Mercure Urinii – An Accor ALL Hotel
- A Nighttime Walk with an iPhone
- A Morning Exploration around Central Bucharest
- Back to Bucharest Henri Coandă Airport and the Visa Satellite Lounge
- BA887 Bucharest Henri Coandă Airport to London Heathrow (Club Europe)
- Two Trains, A Tube and a Bus to Home
- Silver retained. But a New Battle awaits
Before checking out of the hotel, I decided to try and make a sightseeing plan – mainly, as I didn’t want to rot in the hotel room until check out, then head for the aircraft home.
With a “meh” of a plan and Google Maps loaded on the phone, it was time to head out. Rather than head through Union Boulevard back to Union Place, I took the back road – now it was light. Again, it’s just interesting to see the different architectural styles.
Round the back of the hotel
This city loves sectors.
Trams!
We all know what Vista means…
Pick a case. Any Case.
My path took me past the Carrefour and north of Union Place and into the old town of Bucharest – a bit that Nicolae Ceaușescu didn’t manage to bulldoze when he ordered his underlings to rebuild the city in concrete.
Scooters. Delightful.
Dare you feed the dragon
Bars
More scooters.
Old towns in Europe feature cobblestones, vendors, and the usual things to make you wonder what happened in the past.
There’s a lot of street dining too, and lots of walking tours going around. Maybe next time I’ll book one. Maybe not. Sometimes it’s nice to go at your own pace without tagging along with someone. Also it gives me a chance to divert where I want.
Besides I have the ultimate tourist map with me – Pokemon Go (ok, ok, Google Maps too)
My route took me through the old town, via the Central Bank of Romania.
From there, onwards to Macca – Vilacrosse Passage, with plenty of restaurants for those who need food, with some wonderful glass
From art deco to brutalist
I diverted past the National Military Club, as I was en route to the Royal Palace. It caught my eye as I was passing, as well as the flag on the building seemingly fixed (it seemed the wind was reasonable constant enough at that height to keep flying straight).
The Odeon
Instead of heading to The Palaces, I got distracted by the Memorial of Rebirth. I’m easily distracted like that.
Turning away from the Royal Palace, I was in the mood to plan out my next steps, so I headed to The Romanian Athenaeum. Given there were seats there, and it was sunny, it was a perfect space to spend 10 minutes stopping and just going… the world can wait for a little while.
Sometimes in life, we need those physical 10 minutes to say “stop”. I certainly need them more these days as I battle through life with some of the things that head onto my desk in many worlds.
I decided that Victory Arch would be my next and final stop. Working out a route there was easy enough. I just had to follow it.
This cat had more than enough of the day. I can’t say I blame it.
I walked from The Romanian Athenaeum to Piața Romană and attempted to work out how to use the Metro system.
There’s a station somewhere around here.
Piața Romană is a fill-in station on the Bucharest metro – and thus has very narrow platforms. Dangerously narrow one would say.
Hmmmm.
Yikes. That’s narrow!
This is fine, except I had boarded a metro going the wrong way. And I didn’t realise for 5 stops. A quick platform dash onto one heading the right way, I was going in the right direction with only a bit of a time loss.
I wasn’t arguing to be fair.
Popping out at Aviatorilor station, I followed Google Maps until I hit their Trumpant Arch.
It’s visually nice enough and equally mad roundabout, like its Parisian counterpart
But a quick check of the time, and I noticed that my time in Bucharest was slowly running down.
It was time to find a way back to the Airport.
Next: A walk in a park, a protest, a bus and an airport.
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Interesting and the pictures are really phenomenal.
Two questions:
Is communication difficult?
Where are all the people? These lovely areas should presumably have people walking about.
1) Is communication difficult?
There is a good level of English proficiency, but knowing some basic Romanian is a good thing – Greetings and how to say thank you go a long way.
2) Where are all the people? These lovely areas should presumably have people walking about.
I was walking around between 9am and 1pm on a Friday. So The Old Town was quiet, and most of the road route were quiet. I try to time the photos to be people-free when I can, but sometimes, it is just as easy to see no people.
Pently of cars about. Fewer pedestians on the routes I was on.
Beautiful photos! That looks like a very pleasant city, even though I’d have a little trouble warming to mottos like “I love Sector 3”.
Although that one picture reminds me of how much I don’t like the majority of Brutalist architecture.
How is the food?