BUCHAREST, ROMANIA.

Romania has always been at the bottom of my travel list, and I can't say why. I think I just didn't know enough about it to really appreciate it and want to go there. But a few weeks ago, on a spur of the moment, myself and someone very important to me decided to book tickets to Bucharest for a couple of days. 

We flew with WizzAir, pretty good airline. 

My oh my was it a good idea, no, a great one. We booked way in advance, I'm talking about a month and a half in advance, so I was looking forward to this city-trip for weeks and weeks. 

We searched the internet for a cute hostel close to the centre to stay in, booked our room and off we went. 

I've always quite liked the big palava of getting to the airport on time etc, so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Once we were on the plane, everything was a breeze. The flight was about 3 hours long, so both of us tried to sleep a little bit. (I slept a bit less, considering I was staying awake long enough to buy a very adorable watch I had seen in the in-flight magazine.)

Once we got to the airport, we found our way to the airport bus. It was completely packed and we could barely move, the bus started and stopped about 4 times before the driver had to explain to us (in Romanian) that the bus had broken down and we needed to wait for the next one. It finally arrived and everyone hopped onto it, including a lot of extra people who had just gotten off of their plane. We managed to bag ourselves some seats, but the bus was so crowded we couldn't see the board that announced the stops. So we just hung on tightly to the railings and hoped for the best. Eventually, the people cleared out and we finally made it to our stop. 

I honestly need to give a lot of credit to Sander here, because he somehow can figure out where to go in any place in the world, just by having a quick glance at a map. After a 10 minute walk we found out hostel. I do have to say that it was quite a surprise. It was called The Wonderland Hostel and now that I look back on it, it was really quite good. Its located in a dodgy-ish part of Bucharest, just outside of the Old Town. It's a part of a bar called The Underworld (very grungey, very scary, amazing music and amazing people) so it can get a little noisy at night, but nothing that would keep you awake. 

The room itself was extremely basic. We had the only private double bedroom in the hostel, so were lucky enough to have our own shower (if you could even call it that, it looked more like someone started building a shower and then gave up half way through and just stuck a shower head to the wall), it took us a while to figure out how to turn the damn thing on, which then soaked the floor and got pretty much everything wet, but it was a really hilarious experience that put a smile on our faces. 

I have to say, I wasn't at ease when we got there. I put it down to the fact that we had a long day travelling and that we arrived in a city I had never been to before at about 9pm. We decided some food would probably help so headed out, but little did we know that we weren't actually heading towards the Old Town, we were headed towards a pretty dodgy part of the city. We found a typical Romanian restaurant and sat down to order, they then forgot our order and then forgot about our table entirely, but after about an hour of waiting we finally got our food. The food was good, but it made me feel ill, again, I'm putting it down to the whole travelling all day and arriving late. 

Now that I look back, the restaurant wasn't as "scary" as I first thought, it was quite cute and very traditional, the music was fun and the waiters were all quite friendly. 

We decided to just call it a night and went back to the hostel to catch some sleep. 

The next two days were magical. We woke up early, battled with the shower and then went exploring. We found the Old Town pretty easily and had breakfast in a very cute French Café. The Old Town is absolutely beautiful, there is so much architecture and history everywhere you look, and pretty much every single building is beautiful. We walked around all day, discovering new places and just enjoying ourselves. 

Over the 2 days we went to a museum, to see Parliament, to a gorgeous park, walked around the city, spent hours walking down the cute little roads in the Old Town, ate delicious food, got soaked by the rain, walked along a river, found the most amazing bar/restaurant you could imagine and chilled out there for what seemed like hours, watched an amateur rap battle/concert, got even more soaked, had some (very cheap) drinks in various bars and just had the time of our lives. 

It was such a great experience and I was really sad to leave. All in all it turned out to be a pretty cheap trip, and was really worth it. It's safe to say that I'll definitely be going back there at some point, hopefully when the weather is a little bit better. Here are some photos I took!

This was the first big building we saw while walking to the Old Town,
no idea what it is but we enjoyed it nonetheless. 

The French Café. We had a delicious breakfast here. 

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If you ever go to Bucharest, lift your head up and look at the buildings, you'll see lots of
beautiful ones like this.  

Lovely walk along this river, despite the rain. 

I just thought this was the cutest thing, ever. 

Parliament, the second biggest building in the world, with over 3000 rooms.

Another beautiful view of Parliament.

Definitely had a little giggle at this.

The Bazaar café. We spent quite some time here and loved every second of it.

S. <3