Day 1 - Bucharest

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Day 1 of my travels in Bucharest done and dusted and my first impression is - well, it's hot, sticky, there are lots of stray cats in the street and shirtless men. Shirtless men with quite substantial beer bellies I might add. My flight to Bucharest was fairly uneventful. I was quite amused going through customs as there was literally no body around even if you had stuff to declare. I then had to try find the bus stop (an easy enough task) and then catch the bus to the train station, which is a 5 minute walk from my accommodation. The bus part was easy but the walk ended up being a bit more confusing. I ended up asking a garbage man for directions, he was very helpful (despite speaking very limited English) but he directed me down the wrong street so I ended up having to do a bit of a loop. At that point I asked another man on the street. It was then that a shirtless man who had been sitting on his doorstep jumped up, grabbed my suitcase and started leading me to my hostel. I was only marginally concerned when he took my bag, it was bloody heavy so I didn't see him getting far if he tried to nick it. I was of course then left having to tip him to get my bag back. A whopping 4 leis (1pound) which was all that I had on me at that moment.

The temperature was scorching today so it was quite the struggle to convince myself to leave the relative coolness of my hostel. My first stop was the train station where I got some cash out. They only gave out 100lei notes, which are obviously tricky to cash so the first place I went to to buy a pair of earrings for 25 lei (5 pounds) was not able to give me change for the 100lei note, so the woman called the guy across from her at the fruit stall and he came over and took the 100lei off me an walked off. I must say I was a little worried cause I was like, what if he never comes back, but he did a few minutes later with change for me. I decided to walk into the main area of town cause, well I'm an idiot. It was only a 20 minute walk but the heat was unbearable. I stopped into the servo and bought a bottle of water. I was so dehydrated and excited to drink - only to discover that I had accidentally bought strawberry flavoured water. I finally managed to make it to Cișmigiu Gardens - the oldest and largest park in Bucharest and promptly sat in the shade and read my book for a few hours. It was a really nice park. I decided to buy an ice-cream from one of the vendors. He originally said 4lei but the moment he head me speak English he upped it to 8lei. I was more then happy to pay. There was a large artificial lake in the middle of the park and a restaurant looking out over it. A restaurant which on closer inspection I discovered was air-conditioned. I had found a place to have lunch. Having found this oasis I was keen on staying as long as possible and ended up ordering a starter (breadcrumbed cheese), a main (Chicken stroganoff), a dessert (chocolate crepes) & a drink (what turned out to be a large jug of lemon juice - delicious!). Like all good times my meal eventually came to an end and I was forced to face the outside world. It was almost 6pm so I headed to the meeting spot, getting to walk besides the river ( it's no Thames or Seine but it was alright). Feeling exhausted from the get go I stumbled along following the tour guide as he explained the history of Bucharest for 2 hours.

some interesting facts I did learn included:

- Vlad the Impaler was actually a pretty good leader and things were peaceful whilst he was in charge (the consequence of committing crimes was to be impaled which is apparently quite an effective deterrent.

- The Palace of Parliament was never used by the members of the communist party who commissioned it as it was not done by the time they were overthrown. Michael Jackson was the first person to make use of the balcony during his tour.

- Bucharest is often mistaken for Budapest. When the World Cup was held in Bucharest apparently 300 Spanish people booked flights to Budapest.

- Bucharest introduced plastic money in 2005.

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