June 12, 2026 - Bucharest, Romania

Today's wake-up call came early - around 5:30am - thunder, lightening, and rain pounding against our window! We knew rain was in the forecast but we were hoping it would skip us.

We left the hotel about 8:30 and did a driving tour around the city on our way to the Parliament building. Many of the buildings that were pointed out were beautiful, but with the rain beating against the bus windows, it was difficult to take any pictures.

The rain let up as we arrived at the Palace of Parliament so NOW your history lesson begins.

Shortly after the earthquake in 1977, the Romanian communist leader of the time, Nicolae Ceauşescu, decided to build a new political-administrative center in Bucharest on the higher part of the Dâmboviţa hill, area which was confirmed by specialists as being safe for the construction of monumental buildings. This plan was influenced by his friendship with the North Korean leader at that time, Kim Ir Senior.

Starting in 1980, an area almost equivalent to the total surface of Venice was demolished. He destroyed more than 47,000 buildings and over 57,000 families were evicted. The "People's House," the current Palace of Parliament, took almost 10 years to build with over 100,000 workers, more than 20,000 persons working 24 hours three shifts per day to complete.

During Ceausescu’s regime, this building was a symbol of the old communist times, truly an extravagance. Thanks to its solid wood furniture, more than 2800 crystal chandeliers, impressive dimensions, huge marble columns and other carefully chosen interior design elements for each room, this palace is one of Bucharest's most visited tourist destinations.

In 1989, when the Revolution started, only 60% of the building was finished. Even thought the people resented the symbols of the communist past, demolishing the building would have cost more than finishing it. Finally, between 1992 and 1996, the construction was completed.

This was the visitor's entrance to the building. We had to show our passports and go through security like TSA at airports.

Once inside, our guide continued his great descriptions of the building and the government system.
In many of the rooms the floors which are made from marble are designed to reflect the patterns on the ceilings.

The floor below is designed to look like the ceiling above.

The grand staircase is modeled after the one in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia with one big difference - Ceauşescu and his wife were both very short so the steps only have a 5-inch rise!


Some interesting facts about the building:
1. It has 1100 rooms.
2. It measures about 4 million square feet.
3. There is over 1 million cubic meters of marble in the building.
4. The building weighs 4 million tons!
5. The building is valued at $4.3 BILLION
6. There are eight underground levels and the deepest level has a nuclear bunker with 1.5 meter thick concrete walls.
7. It has a series of tunnels that connect to other state institutions.
8. The underground levels can hold up to 20,000 cars in the tunnels!


This is the room that houses the upper house which is the Senate with 131 senators. The lower house is the Chamber of Deputies which has 334 members. There are 22 political parties in Romania and the number of seats for each party is based on the percentage of votes. It sounded very complicated to me!

The seats across the room on the upper level are for the press. We were in the civilian section looking down on the floor.

The Parliament building holds three Guinness World Records:
* the largest administrative building (for civil use)
* the second largest place worldwide by its volume second only to the Pentagon
* the heaviest and the most expensive building in the world

SO ... you might be asking what happened to Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife when the the revolution started in 1989. They fled from Bucharest by helicopter on December 22, 1989. They were captured the next day and held at a military unit. On December 24 there was a trial which lasted about one hour in which they were convicted of crimes against humanity, including genocide, undermining the national economy, and destruction of public institutions and sentenced to death. On Christmas Day, they were executed by a firing squad, effectively marking the end of the bloody Romanian uprising, the only violent overthrow of a communist regime in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Okay, that's the end of that history lesson, so let's move on! This is the back of the National Cathedral which we could see from the visitor's entrance to the Parliament building.

We drove around the front after boarding the bus. It is closed for renovations at this time.

The official tour ended and everyone was going back to the hotel. Tobey, Wendy and I were dropped off near the Old Town area so we could check it out. This is an assortment of the sights we saw as we wandered around and slowly made our way back to the hotel.

We saw this church and decided to check it out. It was beautiful!

Old Town

Entering the pedestrian area this street was very quiet. We soon arrived on a street with lots of restaurants, men's clubs, and night clubs.

Several of the restaurants have stuffed animals sitting in the chairs - maybe you won't feel like you are dining alone if you are a single!


We stopped for a light lunch as we headed back to the hotel.

Sights along the way

This statue was showing destruction from bullets. The ring in front of the statue had bullet shells in it.

We were lucky that we made it all the way back with no rain! Yeah. We took a break for a while, then Tobey talked me into going for another walk! The are several university buildings all around so there were lots of students out and about - many of them smoking. Here are a few more pictures from our walk.

This building was just one away from the nice red and white building above!

Crepes shop

We stepped up our walk because it was starting to rain and headed more quickly back to the hotel. We have our farewell dinner tonight so I will finish this early. Our transfer to the airport in the morning leaves at 2:30am so it will be a short night. I will try to do a wrap-up with more pictures and thoughts about the trip after we get home.

June 11, 2026 - Brasov to Bucharest, Romania

Today was a busy day. We left the hotel about 8:15 and headed to Sinaia to visit the Sinaia Monastery and Pelisor Castle. Once again we had a small amount of road construction, but lots of traffic!
Gas prices here are high - makes me appreciate less than $5.00 a gallon! The currency converts to about $7.55 a gallon here - and everyone seems to have a car!

We have seen houses in all states of repair - or disrepair!
The Heroes' Cross on Caraiman Peak was built between 1926-1928 to honor the memory of the soldiers who died in the First World War. In 2014, the construction has entered the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest cross in the world (128 feet) placed on a mountain peak at over 7516 feet altitude.

We arrived in Sinaia after an hour drive and visited the Sinaia Monestery. Sinaia Monastery was built in 1695. There are currently 22 monks still living here. The monastery complex includes two churches: the Old Church (Biserica Veche, 1695) which has original frescoes and traditional Romanian monastic architecture, and the larger New Church (Biserica Mare, 1842-1846) with impressive Byzantine-style paintings, elaborate carved woodwork, and a richly decorated iconostasis that shows the 19th-century revival of Orthodox artistic traditions. The New Church is under renovations so we could not really see what the outside looks like.


We were able to go inside the New Church and there was a service going on. We watched from the back of the church. The priest - who is also a monk - does most of the service from the second room, part of the time with the door closed or with a curtain hanging down.
The inside of the church is beautiful and the ceilings are very ornate.

After a while, we moved on to the Old Church.

It was much smaller, but still very ornate.


After our visit we headed on to see the Pelisor Castle, about 10 minutes away. This building with the bear statue in front was just before entering the castle grounds.
As far as castles go, the Pelisor is relatively new. It was built in 1899-1902 as the residence of the future King Ferdinand and Ferdinand's consort Queen Marie. It was truly state-of-the-art. There are 160 rooms, it had electricity and central heating from the start, and 2 elevators were added in 1903!

We entered and went up this grand staircase.


There are over 4000 armory items in the palace's collection, but they only have about 1600 pieces on display. The armor on the rider of this horse weighs over 250 pounds! It was only worn for ceremonial parades, never in battle!


Many of the rooms had secret doorways and spiral staircases leading to other levels or escape routes.
The dining room


As we exited the palace, this gentleman was on the stairs to say goodbye!

One of the garden areas


We were originally going to have free time to explore the grounds and have lunch, but as we were inside the castle EVERYONE'S phones went off with a severe weather alert for thunderstorms and hail. We had to climb the hill to get back to our bus - about a 10 minute walk - so the guide suggested we get back to the bus and drive to get over the mountain pass.

We had about an hour drive and stopped at a gas station that also had food and tables. Next to the station was a field filled will poppies, daisies, and nettles. We didn't get rained on so that was good.

Coming into Bucharest there was quite a bit of traffic. We circled the Arch of Triumph in one of the roundabouts so we could all take pictures because we won't be going by it again while we are here. It was originally built between 1921-1922 as a symbol of Romania's victory in World War I.

We also went by a group of protesters in Victory Square near the government palace headquarters.

We arrived early to the Sheraton Hotel in Bucharest about 3:00pm. After checking in we took a short 30 minute walk to get oriented to the area before heading back to the room to rest before dinner which was here at the hotel. Dinner was a sirloin and mashed potatoes, but the dessert was the best! It was a chocolate and vanilla mousse.

Tomorrow we have a driving tour of Bucharest and visit the Parliament building. Our time is winding down!