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| Ceaucescu's Last Stand | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Romanian Athenaeum |
We're not up early, having stayed awake last night looking at the possible tourist sites on the playbook. Breakfast available until ten, though, so we're fine. And actually in no great hurry to go out as it's raining - and if it were any colder it would be snowing. The buffet is worth lingering over. There are ot dishes, which we almost ignore, as the rest is so attractive including, as well as the standard salads and pastries, a variety of fresh and dried fruit and nuts, smoked salmon, and even creme caramel. And, unlike most restaurant buffets, the juice is real juice. Lovely being able to have a breakfast that is both luxurious and healthy. A coffee pot on every table too.
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| Near Revolution Square |
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| Romanian Architects' Union Building |
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Then out with our umbrellas, only intermittently needed. We're a block away from Revolution Square. Takes us a bit to spot the Communist Party Building, from which Ceaucescu made his last speech to a people he was horrified to find unreceptive, and from which he escaped, temporarily, by helicopter - largely because we're looking for a higher and more dramatic balcony, knowing as Ceaucescu did not the high theatre with which this would all end. There's a memorial in the park in front to the mostly young protestors who died, especially chilling as they were, many of them, the age of our own children - eighteen and twenty in December 1989. Their parents, and even a few of their grandparents, must still be
alive.
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| Caru cu Bere |
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There are other buildings around the square that are far more compelling. We had been prepared for the Stalinist and the East European drab, but not for the romantic nineteenth century. An old royal palace reinvented as the National Art Gallery and the Romanian Atheneum with a beautiful baroque cupola. Many of the buildings in the area still bear the visible scars of the revolution, but the heart of the city is a noving combination of romantic, revolutionary and modern - the last being exemplified by the striking architectural association building - traditional surmounted by an ultra-modern top.
In the afternoon we head south a few blocks to the Caru cu Bere, a nineteenth century beer hall justly famous for its decor, though the food is not at all bad, and our draft beer quite nice. We go for a late afternoon lunch, about 4:15, and are admitted on a promise that we will be gone by 5:30. It's humming with locals, platters of food, tankards of beer, and live music, but at first all we can see is the space itself - all rich wood and marble, galleries and vaulting and stained glass.
In the afternoon we head south a few blocks to the Caru cu Bere, a nineteenth century beer hall justly famous for its decor, though the food is not at all bad, and our draft beer quite nice. We go for a late afternoon lunch, about 4:15, and are admitted on a promise that we will be gone by 5:30. It's humming with locals, platters of food, tankards of beer, and live music, but at first all we can see is the space itself - all rich wood and marble, galleries and vaulting and stained glass.
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