Continuation of First Day in Bucharest

The blog is being a bit difficult, so I am going to try this again. So we went to the museum, saw the sights, and moved on. For being the national history museum, there wasn't much history to see. We continued our walk around the city to the river that runs through it. Interestingly, Bucharest is called "Little Paris." I think this is because of the river, triumphal arch (I'll get a picture of that tomorrow), and the streets lined with outdoor cafes (at least where we are staying). It appears that everything is done in districts here. We happen to be staying in the restaurant and wedding dress district. Walking down the streets nearby you only see those two options.

Parliament Building

Continuing on the walk, we found the 2nd biggest government building in the world (second to the Pentagon in D.C.). It was originally built for the communist dictator but now houses parliament. We walked all the way around to the back and found a modern art museum. We thought this would be a great way to cut through the building to save ourselves that long walk again, but denied. We left without seeing the museum. I was ok with it.

By this time, mom and I were starving, but we didn't want to eat too much because we were going somewhere special for her birthday that night. We settled on the French Bakery next door to our hotel. We had a strange sandwich with mozzarella and mayo and a Greek salad that was nothing like a Greek salad. It was a good snack though.
Next was an adventure to find a grocery store. This was no easy task because they are not labeled very well. After walking for a while, I happened to peek in a door, and hooray it was a little grocery store perfect for buying water and some snacks for later.

Baked Apple, Yum!

Fast forward to dinner, we went to a traditional Romanian restaurant called Caru' cu Bere. We weren't sure what to expect, but part of the fun of traveling is that you get to experience new things all the time. We didn't have a reservation because they were fully booked for the evening, but our hotel friend at the front desk said that we should just go and wait a bit and we would get a table. When we got there, they said that we could have a table for an hour, so we took it. The menu looked like a newspaper full of Romanian words mixed with some English. We ended up with a mixed grill of chicken and lots of different sausages. It ended up being very good, and for dessert we had a baked apple. It was a whole apple that had been baked, amazing. Mom even got to try out some traditional Romanian dancing! What a fun night :)

Mom doing traditional Romanian Dance.