We were quite sad to leave Brasov. We really liked it there and we had grown quite attached to the good kebab place that we went to the night before. The check out time at our hostel was noon, which is relatively late by hostel standards. When I had originally planned this trip out, I thought the 10:30 train would be the best bet because it would allow us to get some sightseeing in at Bucharest. Because of the late check out, however, we decided to prolong our departure from Brasov a little.
We woke up around 10 and started cleaning up the room for check out. We had breakfast and Mia ran around unsuccessfully trying to find that Bruce cat she had grown so fond of over the past few days. We couldn't find him. I had seen him earlier when I stopped by the kitchen to grab our bag of sandwich bags, but he was nowhere to be seen after that :( Mia's still upset about this.
After eating, we decided that we'd get some kebabs for the road and went back to the kebab restaurant. We went back, finished packing up our stuff, and went to reception to check out and to ask if they could call a taxi for us. By the time we used the restroom and got our stuff outside (which really wasn't that long), the taxi driver had been there long enough to want to drive away and leave. We had to run after him to stop him. That made the taxi drive over to the train station kind of awkward. He was also annoyed with me when I asked him what the taxi fare was at the end of the ride. Coincidentally, we also learned that we got hard core ripped off by the taxi driver who took us to the hostel on Wednesday. The guy today charged 6 lei (about 2 dollars). The guy on Wednesday charged 20 (about 6-7 dollars). In the grand scheme of things, it's really not that much, but I was annoyed.
Anyway, we got to the train station, made reservations on the 12:40 train and went upstairs. Just like any other Eastern European train, this one was late. About twenty minutes, which I guess is better than it could have been. Other than that, the train ride back to Bucharest was relatively uneventful. We were in a train compartment with pretty nice people. It wasn't abysmally gross. There weren't old people sitting in our seats that we would feel bad to kick out. The train conductors didn't decide that our tickets were invalid. Not bad at all.
Once we made it to Bucharest, we made our way over to the Metro station to get to the general area of our hostel. The hostel was relatively easy to find because it's between two major streets. Once we were there, we had to wait in the reception for a while for someone to decide to pay attention to us (they were too busy playing around on facebook). We got our stuff down and tried to rearrange our bags for our flight to Milan. Once that was done, we set out for some sightseeing.
So the guidebooks said as much as did our friend James from England, but Bucharest really isn't an exciting city. There's really nothing particularly thrilling about it. It's super urban and loud, but doesn't have any of the charm or personality that other major European cities have. We walked through one street for a while and took pictures of building that looked like they might be important. Later, while we were eating dinner, I was informed by my Triposo app that we had seen most of the big sites of the city on the walk. Okay. It was kind of a sketchy street too. The only reason we realized it was a big street was because it had all of the upscale designer stores like the Gucci store.
In any case, we stopped for dinner (at Pizza Hut where they do have functional WiFi) and then regrouped and tried to figure out our plan. The big thing to see in Bucharest is the Palace of the Parliament/People's House. It's one of the biggest administrative buildings in the world. We decided to wind around our route a little so we could see one of the city's parks too. The Palace of the Parliament was pretty impressive. It was huge and imposing and almost looked more like the Venetian than the building that Romania's parliament works in. There is a park sitting in front of it, so Mia and I got some ice cream and sat around observing the giant building. I think that was the highlight of Mia's trip to Bucharest. We took Metro back to the hostel from there.
One thing I noticed that was missing from our short tour of Bucharest were stray dogs. Apparently Bucharest has had a problem with stray dogs that run amuck through the city. We had seen a lot on the outskirts of town, including a few that were walking along the train tracks a la Homeward Bound, but we really didn't see many walking around the city as I had expected.
Also, while we were checking our email and facebook on the hostel computers, we happened to be on CNN and notice the news on Hurricane Irene. At first, we didn't mind it too much until we also saw that it was going to hit New York. As in the city we're connecting through to get to SF in a couple of days. This was kind of a problem, so we contacted home to see if they had heard anything about it. Turns out our flight had been canceled (thanks for telling us American Airlines), so Umma rerouted our trip through London for us. Otherwise, I suppose we would have been stranded in Milan as super smelly backpackers.
Anyway, tomorrow it's on to Milan, where we will be staying in airport hotel. I hope the beds are soft. Hostels are more fun, but all of the creaky beds with bad pillows tend to wear you down after a while.
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