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.
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.
