This was the view from Emeri and my hotel room when we woke up.
The coffee in Romania is GOOD!! Strong! The lady who owns this place (or manages it, not sure) made home-made marble coffee cake and fried eggs however we wanted them. And there was an array of delicious food too!
Sophia took a video of her dad at the breakfast bar that we had.
After everyone was up, we left the hotel and headed toward the People's Palace, also known as the Palace of Parliament.
I never knew that Bucharest has its own version of the Arch of Triumph. It was built in 1921-22, commemorating Romania's victory in WW1 and the coronation of King Ferdinand and his wife Marie.
I love the architecture of this city!!! You will see lots of posts of buildings, because I love that! I considered becoming an architect at one time.
The traffic is crazy busy. The streets are narrow! Cars go every which way!
They also park every which way! No problem if you park in front of a parked car. You just leave your phone number on a piece of paper and if they need you to move it, they will call you to do so.
Ruxi drove the van around for some time before finding a place we could park. We found a place in front of a pharmacy. Here pharmacy IS spelled with an "F".
We like to joke that Al went to Pharmacy school thinking it was FARM-acy. He actually would have loved being a farmer.
The People's Palace
This is the seat of Parliament of Romania. It is the 2nd largest administrative building in the world. The Pentagon is bigger. It was ordered built by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the president of Communist Romania. It was built with forced labour in addition to soldiers, to minimize costs. Some people died during the construction; one source claims about 3,000 deaths! It became known as The People's House after the Romanian Revolution of Dec. 1989. It changed from a palace fit for a dictator into the seat of democractic government. Ceausescu and his wife were executed by a firing squad on Dec. 25, 1989.
The building has 12 stories and 8 underground levels. He was afraid of a nuclear war and built an atomic bunker. We were not allowed below. I would have loved to see the prison where Richard Wurmbrand and other Christians were imprisoned and tortured. Do you know his story? You can read about him. There is also a movie called "Sabina" (his wife's name). In the movie, one of the rooms we visited in this place is featured.
When we arrived there, there were lots of police around the place. There were protests that were going on. The police told us we would not be able to take a tour that day.
Ruxi went on in and asked if there were tours going on. At that time, they were in between demonstrations and they said we could do it as long as the people didn't begin demonstrating again.
We got our tickets and waited our turn.
One of the crystal chandeleers weighs 5 tons!
Adam had this picture taken
One man in the tour group with us heard us speaking English and asked where we were from. When I told him, he smiled real big. He was originally from Brazil, but immigrated to the U.S. Attended Pitt State (Pittsburg, Kansas where our daughter went!) and now works in Tulsa! We are neighbors!
We were told that dignitaries/presidents/world leaders
come through these doors.
This carpet weighs one ton! It takes 35 people to roll it up.
It was all so very ostentatious!
World leaders meet in this room in a circle. Each person wears headsets that translate what is being said into their language.
On our tour, we saw about 3% of the building. It took an hour.
As we walked back toward our car, here came the protestors!
These were school teachers, protesting low wages and certain rights. Not sure about those hats. Probably they represent the region of Romania they are from.
"You're afraid of good education because you're afraid of an educated nation."
Schools were out for this day.
These teachers are from Galati where we were headed.
A lot of noise and perhaps parliament will pay attention, but perhaps not. Surely they would hear them as they passed by. We told Ruxi that in America, protests usually turn ugly and people destroy things. Their protests here may be loud, but they are peaceful.
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