Wow, February already. How did that happen!

Today we had planned to have a wander around Bucharest city to see the ‘sights’ (of which there are minimal, if any…) but the weather saw to that. Just pouring down with rain. So I stayed in bed.

The rain had eased off by about 11am to just a light drizzle, so we headed out anyway! The hotel is right in the ‘centre’, if such a thing exists and just outside were large old buildings and monuments.

One of these monuments is the Rebirth Memorial, a memorial of those who died in 1989. A large white obelisk with a donut shaped black object near the top. Bit random. And is supposedly one of the most photographed things in Bucharest. (Shows how many sights there are here!!) There didn’t seem much in the way of a brunch place. Nor anywhere to eat at all really.

Until we spotted a Paul. That typical Romanian place….! (I.e the French patisserie). I enjoyed a peppermint tea and a dark chocolate chip bread roll. I usually try to eat the local cuisine, but didn’t do so well on Romanian food whilst here!! For a start it was hard to find anywhere. And once you had found somewhere, the menu was just meat. Never mind!

Just along the road was the University Piata – again really not much here. A few more buildings.

Apparently there are still bullet marks from the 1989 uprising around here, but I didn’t spot any. We got lost around all the pedestrianised Old Town. Lots of bars (all closed) and a few shops (again all closed). But bumped into a few pretty buildings – the national bank, another bank building, the national history museum. Nothing overly exciting though. There were a few small churches scattered around, services were going on inside. And beggars loitering outside.

After a couple of hours of wandering around, there wasn’t much left to see and I was running out of time. So back to the hotel to pick up my bag.

I ordered a taxi from the hotel around 1.45pm and it didn’t take too long to come. 25 minutes back to the airport – more expensive this time at 40 lei (£6.70) – but we did seem to go a very random long route. I still had 40 lei to spend and was rather disappointed at the lack of shops in the airport.