visiting vlad

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Greetings everyone.........

Day 3 of "searching for Dracula".
Getting here was quite a journey. Thanks to tardy Tri-Rail, I arrived at the Delta check in counter at MIA 2 minutes after theflight was "closed". Mind you, there was still 20 minutes til the flight left, but it was "closed". Luckily, there was another flight to ATL within 1 and a halfhours, so they put me on that one and I still was able to make my connection to Paris. Would you believe that the Paris flight ran 1 hour late, thus putting my connection to Bucharest in jeapardy. If you have never changed terminals at CDG, you've missed something! It involved walking, 2 buses, lack of signage and a security checkpoint. I found the gate at 10 am which was departure time.....and they had just started boarding.....thank god Air France had not "closed" the flight.

So I landed in Bucharest and waited for my brother Michael to arrived on the BA flight from LHR....and waited.....and waited. Eventually, my other friends who were on that flight exited customs and said Michael was still filling out papers for missing luggage!!!! The taxi driver sent by the hotel was anxiously waiting also, so when Michael appeared san luggage we quickly piled intothe cab and headed for the hotel......only to hve the cab driver clip the corner of an earth mover which removed the glass from the side mirror of the cab with a nice BANG. On to the hotel!!!!!!!

Later that afternoon, we headed downtown to get an idea of Bucharest. Busy, busy, traffic, traffic and lots of trash laying about. Difficult to find a restaurant at first glance. So back to the, a nice meal there and then 8 wonderful hours of sleep!!!!!!!!

We had a great breakfast and promptly at 9:30, our guide showed up for our tour to Lake Snagov and Dracula's tomb. The guide was a fountain of information about life in Romania pre and post the Communist regime which was overthrown only in 1989. The only way to get to the church and tomb is by boat and the leaky thing arrived to take us across to the island where a height challenged young lady explained everything to us and showed us the tomb~! Hate to tell ya, but I didn't feel anything about a "presence" in the church....which has been pretty well restored since the revolution. Oh well......we still have to go to Transylvania!!!! Behind the church was an area that used to be a sort of VIP prison where the Prime Minster of 1956 Hungarian revoution was imprisoned by the Communists....and across the lake was a humungous mansion where Causescou the deposed dictator lived.

Working our way back into the city, we went to the Parliament Building which was designed and built by Causescou as the 2nd largest building inthe world....after the Pentagon. Its over 1000 rooms and he had people working on it 24 hours a day. AFter the revolution in Dec 1989, the free government didn't inow what to do with it and they found it would be too costly just for the explosives to blow it up......so they moved the legislative bodies into it and they rent out the fantastic function rooms for 5000 Euro per night. Caucescou never stood on the balcony, but Michael Jackson did and told the people of Bucharest how happy he was to be in Budapest.....which is in Hungary!!!!!! The rooms we saw were unbelievable both in size and decor (very muted and lots of marble and gold). Michael said they could assemble a 747 in one of the rooms!!!!

As we got back to the hotel, the bus was arriving with our other friends and we met our tour director for the next 2 weeks.

Sorry I have not attached some pics to this, but I will next time. I do apologize for the length of this but I had a lot to say. I'll try to not be so wordy in the future!!!!! Tomorrow is a city tour ande we've signed up for an afternoon lunch and tour of a monestary!!!!!!

Bob

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Comments

[Carola]

Viel Glueck & Spass !!!!!
Wishing you a wonderful time - enjoy every minute - don't do anything I would not do ( lucky you because I do almost ......!!!! - hahaha ). I am really looking forward to hear the latest news from you voyage and some pictures. Tschuess bis bald.....