Constanta – Bucharest

A few pictures of our time in Constanta.

Lupa Capitolina
We had a nice rest for a few days – then organised tickets to get the train to Bucharest.

After arriving, we took a spin around town – it’s a good way to see some sights and get our ‘bearings’. Then we went out to the Giant Bike Store who have been kind enough to look after our bikes while we take a trip to Istanbul and they will pack our bikes into boxes and drop us to the bus station with them when we are ready to leave Romania. How good!! (All for $17 each!!👏🏻)

1st stop. The People’s Palace. The largest building in Europe. Built by the megalomaniac Nikolai Ceausescu.
We went into the old town.
To have a look around.
And dropped our bikes to our apartment.
Where we were very happy with our view! We watched the sunset.
Then went back over the road to the old town.

Over the next couple of days, we did a lot of walking.

A beautiful bookstore we found.
This is the intersection over the road from our apartment and the entrance to the Old City.

A ‘must see’ if you’re ever here is – The Communism and History guided city walking tour. It was so interesting – (which is really an understatement) These poor people have had such a rough time for so long and are still recovering from their time under communism and in particular- under Ceausescu. They are still dealing with corruption in government and people still seem to be wary of authority. (1 in every 8 people of Romania were informers to the Securitate – (secret police) nobody knew who they could trust) unbelievable.

The Patriarchal Cathedral.
The building on the left was moved 100 metres to save it from Ceausescu’s demolition/replanning of the city. (It’s worth googling how these churches were moved and saved)
This is one of the lucky ones.
Funnily enough, we’d had breakfast here @ Bread & Butter, what we didn’t realise was this was where citizens were brought to, interrogated and sometimes tortured by the Securitate in the basement.
I found this photo on google. Our guide walked us past it and said it was originally planned to be the Senate building of Bucharest.
This was a plan for the Senate building. Only the ground floor ended up being built and eventually the Gioconda apartments were put on top. It’s the same apartment building where we are staying!
This is The Central Committee building of the communist party in revolution square where Nikolai Ceausescu’s had his last speech before the revolution in 1989. He and his wife were shot a couple of days later.
The memorial in revolution square.
Our sunrise view ! 🙌🏻

We visited the Museum today.

Which was pretty underwhelming.💁🏻‍♀️

Tomorrow we are heading to Istanbul for a week.

TIL next time. Nigh night.

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