Friday, September 20, 2019: Bucharest Day 1

I finally got to sleep sometime after 1:00am this morning. I slept soundly and awoke just before 8:00am. We walked over to a local coffee house and for breakfast. I had a quiche and Maria had some sort of avocado mixture on toast. It was all very good and satisfying. After breakfast, I took a walk around the area.

The exterior of our apartment building

The Trofic, where we ate breakfast

The opera house

Some drab apartment buildings

Street mural of Vlad the Impaller

New and old architecture side-by-side

Some rehabs are covered with fabric for the time being

Lots of street cafes in the Old Town

Parking is EVERYWHERE and ANYWHERE!

A new building built within an old shell

Special lanes for scooters and herds of scooters use them 

I was told by the driver yesterday that there were 3.5 million inhabitants in Bucharest who owned 3 million cars. Parking is the ultimate achievement. I read an article today written back in 2014 that said that in Bucharest, there were five vehicles for each available parking spot. Therefore, it is understandable that they park, double park and triple park everywhere, even on sidewalks and on stairways.

Maria wondered out loud why someone has not thought about putting in more parking garages? Good question! There is obviously a need. There are a couple of garages, but more could be used.

After noon, we decided to walk over the the Arc de Triumph, the WWI war memorial. It was about a two mile walk and was near the city park (Parcul Regele Mihai I or King Michael I Park). On the way, we stopped and toured the George Enescu National Museum, located in the Cantacuzino Palace, proclaimed to be one of the most beautiful buildings in Bucharest. The Palace was built in 1901/1903. The reason the building hosts the Enescu Museum is because the widow of the original builder married Enescu in 1937 and they lived on the grounds until 1946. The Palace and adjoining buildings were donated to the Museum upon the death of Enescu in 1955.

We also strolled through a small open air market selling local foods, garments and trickets. One old vendor insisted on giving Maria several Romanian postcards of old photos.

After walking by the Arc, we went into the park and had lunch by the lake at the Taverna Racilor Herastrau. I had fish and chips and Maria had a seafood paella. We shared a skewer of shrimp. For cocktails, they did not have Maria's favorite Moscow Mule, but they did have a virgin Moscow Mule. So, she ordered that along with two shots of vodka. Worked very well, I was told.

After the lunch and cocktails, the thought of walking back 2+ miles led us to hail a Uber. We relaxed for a couple of hours before heading back out to Old Town in the evening.

We ventured out again around 7:00pm, walking down through Old Town. We were still full from lunch so we were looking for a bar to relax. Maria found a recommendation for Newton Cocktail Bar (http://newtonbar.ro/) which was only 800 meters (over one-half mile) away. We found it without much difficulty. It was not a large place but, as we were to find out, it has a large party venue in the basement. They had 495 cocktails on their menu, but no Moscow Mule (Maria's drink). We were there until about 11:00pm.

During that time, we had several cocktails and witnessed a large parade of people coming in and heading down to the basement for some sort of private gathering. We were not invited. Also during this time, Maria conducted several conversations with her real estate agent. It sounds as if they are very close to finalizing the sale of her house.

We also discussed some of our upcoming trips, including the world cruise, the trans-Siberian trip and the Nile cruise. I had not previously offered Maria the opportunity to join us on the Nile cruise, but upon discussion, she seemed interested...as did her sister Yasmin. I sent Maxine an email asking her to find out if there were any open cabins on the cruise ship. There were not, but Maxine said she would stay in contact with Viking in case one becomes available.

We finally left the bar around 11:00pm and walked back to the flat. We punched the button for the elevator and nothing happened. We surmised that someone had not closed the door and the lift was stuck on another floor. I went up the stairs and found the elevator on the third floor. I climbed in, closed the door and brought it down to the lobby. Maria boarded and we punched the button to go to the sixth floor. We almost made it. The elevator stopped about six inches before reaching its sixth floor position. Unfortunately, the outer door would not open, because the box was not in its proper position. This was about 11:30pm.  We punched buttons and hammered on the door to no avail. Maria called the hostess and told her we were stuck. It took about one hour before someone (who did not speak English) to arrive and finally free us from our 3' x 5' box. It was OK, we didn't panic...too much. We decided to start a game of on-line chess.

We finally got back to the flat around 12:30am. We decided to have some popcorn and watch a You Tube video of a journalist's trip to North Korea. We did not quite get through that before we were both ready to call it a day.