I was lucky enough to visit Bucharest in early October - a Ryanair Flash Sale had made it impossible to say no! I started developing an interest in this place after reading The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuiness - it’s about Bucharest during the last 100 days of Nicolae Caeușescu’s rule in 1989. I also find any post-communist state so intriguing, so have wanted to see what this city holds in terms of general feel, the people, nightlife, culture, architecture, art, food. So much to explore!

I read a book by Kiki Skagen Munshi, Whisper in Bucharest, over the summer. This provides a very different angle of a boy moving from the countryside to the city, going through university and making his way up the ranks. Both gave me an idea, though neither painting a specific picture of what to expect, so I went with an open mind…

Top things we did (in order of doing them rather than preference):

1. Sheltered from the rain by taking a tour of the Ceaușescu home in Bucharest.

We were really unlucky with the weather one day, so we booked this in advance. It was a 50-minute tour of the house. The tour guide was great, and provided lots of historical and social context. There was also an event going on in the palace which meant it was totally closed off to the public, so we figured this was the closest thing we could do to make sure we heard more about what this family did during their rule, and some insight into the revolution too. 45 RON per person, worth doing it!

2. Explored the Old town and walked down to the Palace of the Parliament.

 The old town, of course, is worth spending time walking along its cobbled streets at any time of day. Fortunately, our accommodation was very near this area so we tried different places here for breakfast, lunch and dinner! There’s a beautiful bookshop called Cărturești Carusel (Strada Lipscani 55), which also has a nice looking café on the top floor.

 The walk from here down to Bulevardul Unirii will take you then to the Parliament building, and walking along the road here gives you a good sense of the grandeur that Ceaușescu was trying create. You’re not going to miss it, it’s the largest administrative building in the world! Unfortunately we weren’t able to go in (there was a big event on) – next time! The Museum of Contemporary Art is also housed around the back of this building. Again it closes for an exhibition change every 6 months, and October happened to be the month it was closed.

 3. Hired a car and went north to Transylvania!

 One of the highlights of the trip for me was getting out of the city. I’d been given advice that it wasn’t worth hiring a car due to the quality of the roads and general lack of following the rules, but we decided to ignore that advice, and I’m so glad we did!

Getting out of Bucharest took a while, like it would in any other city, so we started early and it was easy enough. The drive north along Highway 1 was stunning. We chose the right time of year to visit for the autumn colours, I hope these photos do justice to it! Our fist stop was in Sinaia, where we visited Peleș Castle. It wasn’t open, but it was a beautiful building to see from the outside, and the setting in the hills was spectacular. We went on and the scenery was so beautiful we took a small detour for some photos of the mountains next to Bușteni, before going on to Bran to visit the castle. This took about 4 hours to get there, including the stops along the way.

 Bran Castle was spectacular to see – a 14th century fortress on top of a cliff in a small town. The surrounding woods and snow-capped mountains add to the atmosphere! There’s a lot of information inside about the history of the building, its previous owners, Romanian Folklore, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and plenty about Vlad the Impaler. There was even a torture exhibition when we were there! (We decided to skip that one). We were here around midday, I can only imagine what it must be like at night, as the atmosphere still had that air of mystery around it.

We spent about an hour at the Castle then headed to Brașov for the afternoon for some lunch, and visit some sights and walk the medieval walls there. All in all, it cost around 70 Euros for the car hire and petrol. There are tour operators that offer trips with a similar itinerary if you don’t want to drive, but having the chance to just do some things quicker and take your time over others (or a little detour to take photos as we did) made the difference for us.

Eating:

We read a lot about places to eat for typical Romanian food such as polenta with pork wrapped in cabbage leaves or stews. There were so many varied reviews!

We had dinner at Hanu' lui Manuc, an Inn in the old town. Good price, and the setting was great too. We had food in the cellar, away from the main dining area above, so it had a relaxed atmosphere. The food was tasty and lots of it.

Caru' cu Bere came up in our searches many times – we ended up going here for breakfast. Interesting decor, but the food wasn’t great!

We had brunch at Dianei 4 on Sunday. Quirky, cool vibe and good food with an interesting menu from breakfast to dinner and drinks at night.

Getting Around:

We used Uber mostly as it was cheap and efficient. The metro was also fine, just took much longer for the routes we wanted.

We were warned by our hosts that taxis would often try to scam tourists so we stayed away from those.

We hired the car form the airport as we dropped it off there the following day to catch our flight back. There were no problems with driving at all.

Accommodation:

We stayed at Cloud9Living booked through booking.com – great location, simple room, private bathroom (not attached to the room), and a nice kitchen/lounge area.

There were still things we didn’t get to do, but I would definitely consider coming here again and spend some more time exploring beyond the city.