I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but, it’s really hot here.

I know, I know, what did I expect?   Traveling to this part of the world in August, right?

Anyway, I’ve been able to tolerate the heat pretty much on this trip so far but last night almost broke me.

The wall mounted air conditioners in dorm room go from 16° to 25°.   In Istanbul, we had the remote in our room and we’d set it to 16° so the room would be nice and cool when we came back from a long day out.

The hostel we’re at here in Bucharest decided to set the temperature to 21° and keep the remote to themselves.

When we got back from dinner last night, I took a shower to wash off all the sticky sweatiness ready to turn in for the night around midnight.

I got to the room and sat in my bed.

Sweating.

I might have gotten 2 hours sleep last night because it was just so uncomfortable lying in a bed sweating.

Last night was easily my worst night sleep while traveling and that’s saying alot considering how many nights I’ve spent in hostels over my trips.

Anyway, finally at 9am I got up and ready to tackle our only full day in Bucharest.

Free Walking Tour

We walked over to the fountains in the main square and met Maria, our tour guide for today.

The tour took 2 1/2 hours and covered alot of the central part of the city and the old town.

Here’s some little tidbits I learned along the way:

We visited a square devoted to St Anthony who is the savior of the lost.   On Tuesdays locals flock to this square to “find” anything they are looking for whether it be car keys or love.

After an earthquake in 1977, the leader of the country used it as an opportunity to demolish most of the city and redesign it.   This displaced 40,000 people during the reconstruction period.

To move buildings from one area to another, they constructed rows of train tracks to lift and slide the building to its’ new destination.   Some residents didn’t want to leave during the move for fear the government was lying to them and they wouldn’t be able to return to their home after the move.

The Romanians have a saying that “the best vegetable is pork” so, yeah, the country is not very vegetarian friendly.   That’s not to say that there aren’t salad and some good vegetarian dishes, but pork is king here.

The reason pork is so pronounced here in Romania is influenced by the ottomans.   Back in the day the took everything but left the pork behind because the Muslims didn’t want it.

Oh yeah, also found out that the alcohol shot I tried last night was 70% proof which explains why it made my facial muscles contort in a comical way.

Also found out that when you see “salad” on a restaurant menu, it actually means a dip or spread which explains why I got some sort of dip last night with my meal when I distinctly ordered a salad.   By the way, I still have no idea what it was.

Mission: Mini Fan

The tour ended around 1pm but we still had another part of the city to see on our own.

We also needed some lunch as we hadn’t eaten yet today and I was also on the look out for a mini electric fan I could plug in by my hostel bed to cool me off while I sleep tonight.

There was a metro right where we ended the tour so we took it one stop up where there was a store Maria had suggested may have the fan I was looking for.

I figured I’d pick up the fan and grab some lunch somewhere nearby before heading off again to explore.

Well, the place had no fan and there literally were no restaurants anywhere expect for pizza places.

Okay, then…

We were walking past a Sheraton hotel so I decided to go inside to ask the front desk if they could recommend anywhere to find a fan.

Travel tip, by the way, the best place to get recommendations or help in English is to go in a hotel like that.

They pointed me to bookstore further back from where we came.

We decided the fan could wait, however, we needed to eat!

Lunch

We took the metro up one more stop to the area we wanted to eventually explore which has a park.

I figured that, for sure, there’d be a restaurant or café in the park.

Yeah, not so much.

Since we were in the park we decided we may as well walk through it and explore.

Of course, our sense of relaxation in this peaceful park was offset my our burning desire to get food in our bellies.

Eventually we did find a nearby restaurant that we popped in around 2:30.

Again, it wasn’t cheap and this place was serving more of a generic menu of meats, seafood, and pastas as opposed to Romanian dishes.

We were hungry though so this would be the place.

I did get a pork chop with a sweet potato mash cause, ya know, that whole pork thing we learned on the walking tour.

So, it was kind of a Romanian dish…

More Exploring

After lunch we walked to the nearby Arc de Triomphe.

Not quite like the one in Paris, but still really cool to see and walk under.

We found the bookstore the guy at the hotel told us about.   They did, indeed, have a mini portable fan!

We also saw the Royal Palace, Romanian Athenaeum, and Revolution Square.

It was now 4pm and we were fading.   It had been a long day.   We’d been out in the sun for almost 7 hours and I was starting to feel it.

We hopped on the metro back to the stop near our hostel.

The station has exit signs for Piata Unirii 1 and Piata Unirii 2.

I remember our bus last night stopped at Piata Unirii 2 so that’s the exit we chose.

We were so, so wrong.

We exited the metro and I looked for the big Coke billboard sign which has been my directional pointer for where the hostel is.

The sign was clear cross across the square and all the water fountains.

The feeling of utter helplessness and defeat I felt at the moment can not be understated.

I was tired, I was hot and I seriously felt like I was going to pass out.

And now there was a long 15 minute walk in front of us.

We sat down on a park bench for 5 minutes to regroup and muster up the strength for that last push for the day.

At 6pm we arrived back at the hostel.

Quiz Night

After a nice, long shower and a fresh change of clothes, I went down to the garden in the hostel to find Nathan and play games with everybody.

A group of 7 of them, fellow travelers and hostel employees, were setting up some Romanian board game so I joined in.

It involved teams of two and you had to guess words your partner had on their card.   Sometimes it was talking, sometimes miming, and others drawing.

Oh, and the words were in Romanian so you had to use Google Translate camera app or have someone else whisper the English translation in your ear.

The other teams got the talking option while I was stuck doing charades with my partner.

The words we had were “day off” and “neigh”.

Trying miming that!

Anyway, after playing for an hour, the hostel’s quiz night started up at 8pm.

There were a bunch of people here for this.   Some guests, some employees, and some locals.

Teams were made of 6 people and our team was myself, Nathan, a guy from the Netherlands, and 3 Romanians.

It was actually pretty fun to play and we used each other’s various knowledge of things to navigate the quiz.

In the end, we ended in a respectable third.

At 11:30, I hopped in bed.

It had been a long day.

Tomorrow we head on a morning train to Brasov after 3 hours north of Bucharest where it will be our new home for the next three days.

Can’t wait!