FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Bucharest

Palace of Parliament was our first stop today. George took us on a drive around the building to appreciate the size, as well as the empty spaces surrounding the building, achieved by demolishing whole neighbourhoods. Ordered by Ceausescu and built during the "worst times" in Romanian communist history, it was a colossal building that he never got to use. Fortunately for us, after the revolution and Ceuasescu's exeution, the people voted to keep the building intact and it became the seat for the Romanian Parliament. We had a 10am tour booked and we had to go with the official guide. The tour took about 1 hour and covered many public halls and rooms of the Palace. It was grand but seemed without soul. Nonetheless we were grateful for the opportunity to see it. We were given seemingly endless statistics about the building and it was difficult to remember them all but one that didn't seem to marry up with the statistics that we learnt from visiting other "big" buildings was that of relative size. The official line is that it is the "second largest building in the world after the pentagon". Either way, it didn't matter. The building was HUGE

The front of the Palace. There were many levels underground as well

A brief history and geography lesson on Romania from our guide while we were waiting for our tour to start

Our tour officially starts

The "theatre" in the Palace

Ornate timber doors

Ceiling panels with gold leaf decorations

Elaborate staircases

Dwarfed by the height of the rooms

The view from the balcony where Michael Jackson waved to the public

Ceaucescu's former house. He never made it to the Palace

We then continued from where we were to head to the north of the city with George pointing out significant streets, monuments and squares. Despite bad traffic (Bucharest had a nevery ending peak hour and cars double parked everywhere!) it didn't take us too long to reach the National Village Museum. As the name suggests, it is a museum of villages! It showcases over 300 houses and buildings as well as other elements of rural Romanian life in a beautiful outdoor setting. This place was important taking into account Romania's past history of being first and formost a farming/agriculture society until communism. We wandered around the grounds for around an hour. The open air and mostly timber structures were a vast contrast to the forced opulence of the Palace of Parliament...

A village church. Don't be fooled by the blue skies and Elliot and Lara's lack of warm layers...it was freezing!

The interiors were also a museum

Ingenious system of keeping hay dry, the roof is movable to just above the level of hay

Gates were a sign of wealth so they were ornate and beautiful

Intricately carvedd

All different

We had the rest of the day to explore on our own and we were dropped off at the Old Town of Bucharest, a small area that was more or less all that’s left of pre-World War II Bucharest. Bucharest was heavily bombed in WWII and what the bombs didn't destroy, communism did. The area was a mix of restaurants, cafes, and "adult" venues. So we had to hurry the children along certain sections...George gave a quick orientation tour and left us to our own devices. After our very late lunch (see below for more details!) we walked back to our hotel.

The children have been very good thus far. There was a lot of history and geography to absorb and they passed the daily quiz! And thus, we decided to reward them with some down time = TV for Jonah and device time for the older two. The "grey team" went to visit the Chistmas markets. We figured we would have many other opportunities for Christmas markets on our road trip. As it turned out, it was a good move as Elliot was under the weather and went to bed early. Mal went out wondering for a beer and pharmaceutical back ups, and had an interesting conversation with a pharmacist. Apologies in advance to our pharmacist friends out there...after a long conversation, the pharmacist was enlightened on the topic of being able to take paracetamol AND ibuprofen on the same day! The anaesthetist could not convince the skeptical pharmacist until google came out and Maxigesic was the key piece of evidence. Besides the drugs, we had also turned to the ancient superfood for all that ails ya...the kebab. Or the shawarma anyway. Having grown up in Bankstown, Malcolm thought he was on top of the kebab lingo.. adana, shish taok, doner kebab, garlic sauce and a healthy vocab of Lebanese swear words. This, unfortunately, was of no use in the Old Town of Bucharest where he was bamboozled by the Kasarli (- a kebab of sorts with meat), the Kasarfel (?) (- similar but no meat ) the regular version (- with chips inside) and the lady version (- with rice instead of chips). The display board cycled through the pictures of the unfamiliar menu items at such a rapid pace that it was nearly impossible to point and say "that one!". And when he did say it, the kids would add in with, "No, not that one". The lady at the order station seemed to be halfway between being annoyed and amused, but some food turned up that was close enough to the original demand and, despite the daunting volume that arrived, it all disappeared. We walked out complaining that we couldn't eat a thing which lasted for the 30 or so metres until we passed by a pastry shop. Three pastries later and we were done for the day.