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For this blog:

This blog is about our trip to Romania and our AmaWaters cruise up the Danube River.  The cruise took us to stops in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany.  Unfortunately, because of low waters the cruise ship needed to get past a shallow section of the river much earlier than scheduled so we missed Croatia. 

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July 24 - Flight to Bucharest Romania

Today we had a leisurely breakfast and finished packing.  We had some time before our flight so we worked on some pictures.

The shuttle took us to Heathrow Terminal 4.  Among other things they had a very interesting ceiling (Mary seems to always notice the ceilings...perhaps because she has to look so far up to see anything).

We discovered large luggage scales at the terminal so spent some time weighing luggage and shuffling items around to get the weight of both checked bags down to just under the limit. 

We checked in and then had lunch before going through security.  Mary got snagged twice, once when she set of the alarm (new shoes…last time she wears them when going through security) and again when they wanted to go through everything in her luggage.  Apparently the piece was packed so tight with things like camera gear and binoculars, etc. that they couldn’t sort things out their scans. 

The rest of the day and the flight were uneventful.  Our luggage all showed up fairly promptly and we had a driver waiting for us just outside luggage claim.  She gave us a running commentary of some of the buildings we were driving by as we headed to the hotel. 

Hotel Volo, our new home for the next few days.

Unfortunately we discovered that while Romania is a part of the European Union they have not yet converted to the Euro.  They are still on the Leu and we don’t have any.  It will be a scramble tomorrow to figure out how to get some currency so that we can pay entrance fees at some of the sights on our tour.

The hotel is nothing fancy but it will do.  We had a decent meal on the plane and since we didn’t get to the hotel until about 9:00 Romanian time we just had a granola bar in the room for dinner.  Quite a come down from David’s awesome cooking on the Wessex Rose.

July 25 - Bucharest. Village Museum and Palace of Parliament

Important things today…Paul found an ATM so that we now have Romanian money, and we took a bunch of laundry down to have it done for us, since we were totally out of clean clothes.

Now on to the fun stuff. 

We were picked up at 9:00 for our city tour.  The tour guide/driver gave a running commentary as we drove through several areas of the city. 

Specific sights we saw included…

"Wings", a monument to the anti-communist resistance (in the Free Press Square)

the  Arch of Triumph in Revolution Square,

the  Art Deco statue Monuments of Heroes of the Air, 

and...the Memorial of Rebirth, officially known as "The Rebirth Memorial Eternal Glory to the Romanian Revolution and Its Heroes from December 1989." 

While the monument was intended to represent the struggles and victims of the Romanian Revolution against communism it is actually quite controversial because of its design.  It is variously named the Potato Skewered on Stake, or Potato of the Revolution, or the Olive on the Toothpick.  All very good descriptions.

Our first stop was the Village Museum (Muzeul Satului).  The village showcases traditional Romanian Village buildings that were moved from their original villages to the museum site. 

Traditionally many of the house complexes were entered through gates and they had a number of interesting examples.

Because most of these homes came from farming areas there were some interesting farm buildings including a building to store hay, with the roof gradually being lowered as the hay is removed.

And an interesting building for storing and drying corn.

The museum included some fences around most of the homes, including some woven with small branches and topped with hay.

We could go into a few of the buildings and most of the homes were furnished with traditional furnishings and items.

There were several churches (the priest from one of the churches even moved into a small home in the museum to be near his church)…

and several mills and a "Laundromat"…

A Laundry tub...put the clothes in the tub and open the flume for water to gush down and clean the clothes.

in addition to the various houses and buildings.

Various artisans also had traditional Romanian crafts for sale.  Interesting to look at, but no place for it as we no longer have a home.  So no purchases.

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More photos of the Village Museum.
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The next stop was the Palace of Parliament, the second largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon).  The Palace is 276 feet tall, has an area of 3,930,000 square feet and a volume of 90,000,000 cubic meters.  It is 12 stories high (with 8 underground), 1,100 rooms and has a vast nuclear bunker in the lower levels.  

The its construction was organized as a contest and was won by Anca Petresu who was appointed chief architect of the project when she was just 28 years old.  In total, the team that coordinated the work was made up of 10 assisting architects who supervised another 700 lower level staff.

The view from the balcony overlooked a massive square intended for holding massive rallies. It is now it is a big parking lot.  The view extends down a broad avenue that was said to have been modeled after the Champs-Elysée in Paris.

The facade is in the austere Soviet Realist style but the interior was as opulent as any palace we have seen.

The tour took a couple of hours, covered bout a mile and visited only about 5% of the building.  It is now used for the Romanian Parliament, is an international conference center and houses the National Museum of Contemporary Art.  However, most of it is never used and is deteriorating. 

The rooms we visited were gigantic.  

The auditorium seats over 600.  

The Human Rights Room has a gigantic round table and is used only for meetings and conferences focused on Human Rights..

Because the rooms were so big the chandeliers had to be equally big to light the rooms.

There were massive marble stair cases going from floor to floor...

and the corridors seemed to go on forever.

Even the ceilings and doors were incredibly detailed and opulent.

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More photos of the Palace of Parliament.
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After walking our legs off we were back at the hotel by mid-afternoon.  Then it was lunch and hanging out in the room taking naps and working on photos.

July 26 - Bucharest: Snagov and Caldarusani Monasteries and Mogoşoaia Palace

This area of Romania grows a lot of sunflowers, and many of them are still in bloom.

First stop was Caldarusani Monastery, build between 1637 and 1638.  

It is still a working monastery so we weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside. The interior was covered with beautiful and aged murals and there was an absolutely incredible old icon that was made of silver with many diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies.  Pretty spectacular.

The next site was the Snagov Monastery, situated on an island in Lake Snagov.  

There has been a chapel on this site since at least 1408 and possibly earlier.  

Its greatest claim to fame is that it is one of the alleged burial sites of the remains of Prince Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler. 

Again, the interior was really beautiful and this time we were able to take pictures. 

The building is situated on a working farm with a bit of a garden...

and there were a number of ponies/small horses grazing around the chapel.  One was only about a week old.  So cute.

The next and last top was Mogoşoaia Palace, built in 1698 – 1702 by Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, Prince of Wallachia.  

He and his sons were martyred in 1714 and are saints in the Easter Orthodox Church.

The palace was still in the hands of his descendants as recently as 1945 when it was nationalized by the communist authorities.  

The details and decor of the building were very interesting.   

One wall was completely covered with tapestries with a "cut out" for the door.

The Palace was on a lake...

and there were lovely gardens.

There was also a small church on the grounds.

On the drive back into town we saw some of the dull, grey apartment buildings from the Communist period.  However, attempts had been made to lighten them up by painting blocks of color on the walls.  It was actually rather interesting.  And certainly looked better.

Plus there were a few other interesting buildings that we passed.

Today is hot and humid so when we returned to the hotel we had a quick lunch and then retreated to the room to work on travel items and photos.