Friday 17th May

Anna took us to the airport for the 10.55pm plane to Doha, Qatar.

Saturday 18th May

The 2 fights were uneventful & on time but were somewhat tiring. We were met at Bucharest airport & taken, with Pam, also on the tour, into the city to our hotel & arrived at about 1.30 pm local time. After a shower and a rest we went for a walk along the poorly cobbled streets of the neighbourhood & went into an old Orthodox church with finely painted walls & the classical iconostasis wall with marvelous icons. It had been well renovated & might have been one that President Ceauşescu had had moved to build his huge unfinished palace.

We moved on & had a beer & a antIpasta platter at a café. On our return we found a pastry shop & bought a large Danish & a bacon filled bread before going to bed at about 6pm local time.

Sunday 19th May

Had an excellent breakfast at the hotel at 8am & at 9 set out to explore. We walked first to the Roman Athenaum, a wonderful late 19th century circular concert hall which we were lucky enough to see empty. After a well earned mineral water we set off to find the National Museum close by but we could hear singing in Creţulescu, another old church, so in we went. The singing at the service was quite stunning as the unaccompanied choir, mainly of women, had 2 male singers also, one of whom was a basso profundo. We last heard such singing in a church in Wales where a choir from St Petersburgh were performing. After about 50 minutes we moved on, as the service showed no sign of ending.

Arriving at the museum we were told it was closed so then went on to visit a Russian Orthodox church, complete with gilded, onion shaped, domes surrounded with very crude wooden scaffolding which looked quite old & rickety.

Nearby we found the Museum of Bucharest, in the Sutu Palace, which focused entirely on the history of the city since prehistoric times up to the present day. It was beautifully presented with English labelling but was rather too much for us as we were tiring.

From there we retreated to the hotel & after a rest, went to find the old Jewish quarter nearby. This proved to be very difficult as we couldn't work out from the map given where everything was. We found the museum only to see it was also closed until further notice. Back we went to the hotel via a couple of shops & met our fellow travelers at 6pm.

Claudia, our Guide, who is in her late 20s, introduced us to the rest of the group, 3 from Brisbane, 2 from Sydney & 1 from New Zealand. All are well travelled, mostly with Peregrine & it should go well.

Most of us had dinner with Claudia & then we went to see a fountains', music & light show in the big park near the hotel. It was wonderful with a massive range of the lighting the music & the hundreds of fountains & we really enjoyed it. The introduction of LED lighting has made such spectacles so easy to control with computers. We gave it away after 45 minutes as we were both pretty tired.

In bed by 11pm, after a great day in Bucharest.

Monday 20th May

Today we had a walking tour of the city with Mihhail, who is also an air traffic controller. He explained the somewhat unusual history of Romania, including its tenuous connections with Rome & its bizarre ancestry as a country, with its present borders settled in 1918.

The "Old Town" part of Bucharest was only invented about 10 years ago when the mayor decided which area would be so. He adopted the concept to match other European capitals although much of the city was of just the same vintage.

Mikhail also took us to see an old church we visited yesterday & later explained that it was an Orthodox Convent and that all Orthodox priests must be married!! Apparently, each congregation appoints its own priest & thus each church tends to be very autonomous as in non-conformist churches & chapels.

We had a coffee at a magnificent German beer house all wood paneled with fine stained glass windows from the mid 19th century. Here we heard about his children's schooling & life in general in Bucharest.

After the Communist regime fell in 1989 within a few years all land & property was to be returned to the previous owners & the fun began. Sitting tenants were sold their apartments or minimal amounts but the complexities of ownership took up to 15 years to resolve & many buildings were abandoned & allowed to decay as ownership was too complex. There are still many such buildings & it is quite sad.

The main rush of building was in the late 19th century, many in the French 3rd Empire style & they were extremely elegant. This continued right through to the 1930s before WW2, when Romania went from neutral, to Axis & then to Allies before succumbing to the USSR in 1945.

We moved on to the Government Offices from where President Ceauşescu gave his last address to the people before he was arrested & with his wife was shot 2 days later on Christmas Day 1989. There is a marble obelisk & a memorial panel with the names of those killed in the subsequent troubles. Unfortunately, panels have been smashed with hammers & there is extensive graffiti on the monument, which is all rather sad we felt.

We said good bye to our guide at the Roman Athenaum & set off to find a market but without success so we had a much appreciated light lunch & took the Subway back to our hotel after finding the Jewish Chorale Temple, which unfortunately, was closing for the day.

Another hard day on our feet.