Drive from Sibiu to Pitesti to Bucharest, Parliament House, Dinamo Fotbol and eating Korean food in Bucharest.

Jim and I woke up early on Tuesday morning to head back to Bucharest for our early morning flight from Bucharest to Frankfurt than back to Denver. We headed out about 5:45am and took the Highway 7 route through the Fagaras mountains towards Pitesti. I wanted Jim to see this route because of the beautiful scenery and it follows the Olt River, however I forgot the sun does not come up till almost 8:00am so it was a dark and rainy drive. Once we arrived outside of Pitesti we were able to take the A-1 Auto Strada directly to Bucharest which decreased our travel time to about 3 hours and 30 minutes from Sibiu to Bucharest. Pitesti is the Romanian Detroit and it is a city of heavy manufacturing including where the Dacia brand is built along with other brands like Ford and Renault.

Rainy roads on the way to Bucharest

Gas station outside of Bucharest. In Romania you never have to pre-pay before you pump which is suprising because of the high gas prices I would imagine there would be more gas

drive-offs. Also most stations have a "grease monkey" that comes out and pumps the gas for you, fills fluids and also will wash your car.

Heavy truck traffic on the outskirts of Bucharest



When we arrived in Bucharest we experienced the morning rush hour which was hectic and chaotic. We dodged cars, pedestrians and stray dogs within the city.

Communist era concrete apartments building still in use today around Romania. Some have been upgraded, painted and look very nice, others do not look so pretty.

Magazine and newspaper stand

Crazy Bucharest traffic!

The city of Bucharest is divided into Sectors rather than named neighborhoods

Electric buses and solar crosswalk signs in use in Bucharest

The street cleaning crews throughout Romania still use brooms instead of leaf blowers!

Cool old military truck on the streets of Bucharest

Downtown Bucharest Mall

Bucharest motorcycle police

It was almost impossible to turn onto this street with the amount of pedestrians walking between cars and ignoring any crosswalk lines or street lights.

Many of the residential parking spots are on the sidewalk!

We stopped by the Dinamo Bucuresti Fotbal/Rugby Stadium and I purchased a jersey and scarf.

 While there I saw their star player Dorin Rotariu arriving in his Mercedes SUV at the stadium for that evenings game! 

We arrived at the Parliament House which was built by former Communist leader Ceausescu in the southwest portion of the of the city. It is the 2nd largest administrative building in the world; 2nd to the US Pentagon. It is the most expensive building in the world and the heaviest!

The palace is 890 ft. X 790 ft. is 12 stories tall or 282 feet high; it is also over 300 feet below ground. It has 1,100 rooms and 3.7 million square feet in size.

Unfortunately to build this beautiful building Ceausescu leveled 1/5th of Bucharest which included residential neighborhoods and historic buildings. In 1980 19 Orthodox churches, 6 synagogues, 3 protestant churches and 30,000 homes were demolished to construct the palace.

Construction began in 1983 and is still not completely finished. It took over 20,000 workers 5 years to build. It features its own power plant and the largest, heaviest curtains in the world! The building is constructed of 3.5 million cubic square feet of marble from Transylvania; 3500 tons of crystal for its 48 large chandeliers; 1409 ceiling light and mirrors. A total of 9.7 million square feet of wood was used in construction and 2.2 million square feet of wool carpets.

The palace houses the Romanian Senate, Legislative Council and the Chamber of Deputies.

King Stephan silk tapestry

After the Parliament house tour we headed to our Hotel Angelo near the airport on the north end of town in Otopeni. The Henri Coanda airport is named after the Romanian that invented the jet engine.

For dinner we headed out to Bucharest's only Korean restaurant the Seoul House.

We had to wake up at 3:00am on Wednesday in order to return our rental car and catch our flight at 6:00am to Frankfurt. The 2hour flight to Frankfurt was good and then a 5 hour layover till we caught our 9 hour flight to Denver and back home.

I am going to write another 2 blog posts. One that gives the websites and Facebook pages of the restaurants,  hotels, government agencies and other businesses we stopped at and that we found useful and then a last post on my thoughts reflections and thank yous to friends and family from our trip to my homeland of Romania!