Zuiderdam MegaVoyage 2018-2019, Bucharest, Romania

We left the ship in Kiel, Germany bidding a fond farewell to the Officers and staff at the gangway and especially Ron Bontenbal, Zuiderdam’s Hotel Director who will be on vacation when we return to the ship. I must admit, we really miss the Zuiderdam folks but thankful we will be back home again in less than 3 weeks....   Our driver picked us up and off we went to Hamburg Airport for our flight to Bucharest Romania...we flew the on the national airline of Romania, Tarom Airlines...everything went smoothly arriving in Bucharest and met by our Jayway Host Olivia...with lots of time to settle into our hotel and to do a walk about the old town to see what we had in store for our walking tour the next morning...We were very excited to be on this adventure, and in Romania, it took a lot of planning and we will be visiting a number of new cities and countries over the next 19 days.  After a great first day, in the morning our tour guide, Emma, was waiting for us in the hotel lobby to start our walking tour of the Romanian Capitol city.... today’s blog is a collection of some of the prominent city sites we visited or observed in our walking tour...  Bucharest offers many beautiful monuments and landmarks, the most prominent and famous being the Palace of Parliament...Communism changed the face of the city, and nowhere is this more evident than at the gargantuan Palace of Parliament the world’s second-largest administrative building, after the Pentagon, and former dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s most infamous creation. Revolution Square heralded the beginning of a new age, this area houses the Senate, the former Royal Palace, now home to the National Art Museum, the Romanian Athenaeum and the Athenee Palace Hotel. While much of the center is modern and the buildings are in various stages of revitalization, we found splendid 17th and 18th century Orthodox churches, and the Biserica Convent tucked away in quiet corners...as well as many graceful Belle Époque architecture buildings adding to the allure of the Victory Avenue once known as the “Little Paris of the East”....a few blocks south brought us to the Old Town...Old Town has been rejuvenated since the revolution lending it to a dynamic, energetic mix of old buildings, restaurants and historical monuments...we ate at Caru Cu Bere restaurant and had a traditional summer Romanian lunch of Mici, skinless pork sausages...by the way through a peep hole, we did see the monument to Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula at the 16th century Biserica Curtea Veche, the city’s oldest church currently under renovation. We really loved our day touring Bucharest...off to Transylvania tomorrow.