So I found out last night that I passed my last CPA test so obviously a Romanian techno dance party ensued (well this is actually in English, but still, they love their techno here):
I decided to go back to being a tourist, so I bought a pass for the Bucharest City Tour (which I took advantage of only after some time at Obor Park). They have a fleet of double-decker busses that take tourists to over a dozen popular attractions around the city. I love seeing cities this way at least to get a bearing (and for relatively little money) since most major cities offer something similar. I saw the 2nd largest building in the world after the Pentagon (Parliament Palace), the Arch of Triumph statue, walked along Victory Avenue (basically like the Rodeo Drive of Bucharest), the Romanian Athenaeum and many other sites.
After wandering down a street that had a cool looking building (which turned out to be the Romanian National Library), I found a cute lunch place. After Beijing I have been hesitant to check out restaurants for fear of being overcharged, but I decided to venture in and am glad I did. I appreciate that it is very socially acceptable here to drink wine with lunch. J
Of course, I also found some other awesome parks. The first was near the Parliament Palace.
The other, Herastrau Park, was in the northern part of town and is the largest park in Bucharest. It was a beautiful crisp fall day so I enjoyed walking around the lake and admiring all the gorgeous gardens and sculptures placed throughout the grounds. The park was huge, so I thought about pitching a tent so that I could just live there for a couple days and see everything, but I thought the Romanian people might not appreciate that… These pictures seriously do no justice to how incredible this park was.
