Our Viking cruise ended with a full-day tour of Bucharest and then a night at the JW Marriott Grand Hotel. We had opted to stay another five nights in the Romanian capital to see it in more detail. Overall we were happy with our decision to stay longer but five more nights might have been a bit too much. On the other hand, we are trying to slow down the pace of our travels.
JW Marriott Grand Hotel in Bucharest
It is clear from the building that the JW Marriott Grand Hotel was originally built for the communist elite. It was the nicest hotel in town and arguably still is. There is even a high-end shopping arcade in the lobby, featuring Rolex, Valentino, Dolce & Gabanna, and others.
Because of our status, we got a huge, upgraded room with a nice sitting area. Originally, we were going to move to cheaper digs at the Sheraton. But I did a quick check of the location and pricing showed the difference with the JW wasn’t much. After we saw the room online, we decided to cancel our reservation at the Sheraton and just spend the entire six days at the JW. Mike even let me order room service the night we got back late from an all-day tour. This is rare, but we were hot, tired, and hungry. After his more than passable burger and fries, he was happy we just ate in our huge room.
They also had a really nice executive lounge, so we could have appetizers and drinks, for me, read (dinner.) All without a fuss. They gave us the option of breakfast in the lounge or the restaurant. We always opted for the huge buffet downstairs in the restaurant. They even served Papanasi, a Romanian specialty, which is a donut topped with sour cream and fruit compote. I was finally able to try one at breakfast and boy was that ever rich, so one for our entire stay was enough.
An Interesting Outdoor Ethnographic Museum
On our first day in town, we visited a really interesting outdoor museum called the “Dimitrie Gusti” National Village Museum. In a wooded area next to a lake, they have moved and installed historic homes from various regions in Romania. For each of the dwellings, there is a plaque that describes where the home came from, how old it is, and what types of people lived in it. The collection included a few windmills and a Jewish home from the 1870s. They have been moving homes to this park for more than 50 years and it is a wonderful way to show what life was like in Romania hundreds of years ago.
Romania has interesting geography. Bucharest is in the far south of the country near the Danube. Surrounding the city on the northern and western sides is the Carpathian mountain range, which separates the lowlands in the south from the mountains and valleys of Transylvania in the northern part of the country. The topography has greatly influenced the differences in the culture across Romania. Contributing to those differences, the regions of Transylvania and Monrovia were separate city-states for hundreds of years and developed independently from Bucharest.
The National Museum of Romanian History
We learned even more about the history of the country at an extensive History Museum near the old town of Bucharest. The museum is housed in a building named “Palatul Poştelor” (The Post-Office Palace), which was built between 1894 and 1899. They had ancient artifacts from archeological digs in Romania, coins, and historical documents. In addition, there is a treasury with jewelry guarded by two suits of armor. But for us, the most interesting part was in the basement. There was a complete recreation of Trajan’s Column that we saw in Rome.
Trajan’s Column
The original column is significant to the Romanians because it depicts Roman emperor Trajan’s campaigns to conquer the Dacians, an ancient local Bucharest tribe. The conquest aimed to incorporate Dacia into the Roman Empire as a province. In addition to the recreation of the base of the column, they had plaster reproductions of all of the scenes on the original column with detailed explanations of what was happening in each scene. The relief, with 155 scenes, portrays Trajan’s two victorious military campaigns against the Dacians; the lower half illustrates the first campaign (101–102 AD), and the top half illustrates the second campaign (105–106 AD). The frieze repeats standardized scenes of imperial address, sacrifice, and the army setting out on a campaign. There are actually very few scenes of battles.
The reproduction was fascinating, especially because we had seen Trajan’s Column in Rome and just know that it depicted the emperor’s conquests but we didn’t know that it was the story of a specific campaign. Ironically, Bucharest is the only place in the world where you can study the Roman emperor’s exploits up close. I think if we had had the energy and it wasn’t so hot in the basement we would have spent hours looking at the hundreds of scenes.
Old Town Bucharest And The Palace of Parliament
Old town Bucharest has quite a few buildings built between 1890 and 1920, most of which are in a French style. There is even a famous bar/restaurant that is built in a former church which still maintains a beautiful interior. Mike enjoyed a pork shank and local beer there with friends one night.
But the most interesting stories are about the giant Palace of Parliament building, the second largest building in the world and also one of the heaviest. It was commissioned by President Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of Communist Romania. The building took 13 years (1984–97) to be constructed in modernist Neoclassical architectural forms and styles. Known for its ornate interior composed of 23 sections, the palace houses the two chambers of the Parliament of Romania: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, along with three museums and an international conference center. Though originally named the House of the Republic when under construction, the palace became widely known as The People’s House after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Despite the museums and conference events, about 70% of the building remains empty.
Urban Development
The biggest controversy surrounding this building was the wholesale demolition of a large part of the old town of Bucharest. Ceausescu’s justification was the Vrancea earthquake of 4 March 1977. However, the building and the urban plan for this district were planned because he was impressed by the societal organization and mass adulation he saw in North Korea’s Juche ideology during his East Asia visit in 1971. Ceausescu decided to implement similar policies in his country, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a “multilaterally developed socialist society.”
There seemed to be lingering resentment toward the demolition of the town for this massive urban project and the maintenance cost of the building, as we learned during our tour of the interior. The tour could only cover a very small part of the building and primarily the rooms dedicated to state functions. The building was mandated to use only Romanian products for construction. The weight of the building is the result of so much marble and stone. However, we were told that the rare green marble on some of the columns didn’t come from Romania because they just didn’t have that color.
Fountains of Bucharest
Another result of Ceausescu’s urban renewal project was the construction of an ornate set of fountains installed down the grand boulevard that runs into the town center from the Parliament. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night around 9 o’clock during the summer, just after dark, there is a fountain show. The spectacle combines music lights and dancing fountains similar to the show at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I love those fountains, so we made an extra effort to attend a show. The big difference in Bucharest is that the fountain show goes for more than 45 minutes.
The fountains turned out to be the thing we enjoyed the most about Bucharest. That said, I think three days in Bucharest is more than enough time to see the city. There isn’t much of a café culture and the old town is very small and not well maintained. As a result, it isn’t a place that we would choose to hang out, but it is definitely worth a visit.
What would you see when you visit Bucharest?
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