Bucharest

Bucharest was an incredible city full of beautiful architecture, interesting  traditional cuisine, and  an active nightlife. The bustling city center and canal outside our window had glimmering lights of McDonalds, H&M, and other globally recognized names. In the same view from our wonderful 7^th floor Air B&B apartment was the Old Town, pretty much all that was left of Bucharest from what it was in the 1400s until World War II and communism. 

A majority of Romanians are Eastern Orthodox. They were building a gigantic church on the parliament grounds behind this small temple.

We walked to the Romanian Parliament building, a colossal and beautiful structure - the largest administrative building in the world. To top that, it is the heaviest building in the world at 9.0356×10⁹ lb. There were guards at all the entrances, but it still wasn't quite as strict as government buildings in the U.S. Sure this building looked big to me, but I didn't realize it was truly the largest building of its type in the world. A man at the gate - after asking first if we were German and then Polish - told us this building would dwarf the Pentagon and White House. 

One of our top meals in Europe was this traditional Romanian meal in Old Town. We sat outside and had a fabulous waiter, Dudu. We started with a single grape rose and an appetizer of pork, pork, and pork. It was fried pork skin, pork lard, cracklins, cheese from the stomach of a goat? To be honest we're still not quite sure. We were wanting cabbage rolls the whole trip because that was what we heard was traditional Romanian. Our birding guide, Florin, had also given us many pointers. Dudu said exactly what Florin had told us and guided us towards 3 dishes that we were already thinking about. He was right - they were good. We were glad to have some locals guiding us on our gastronomical tour of Romania. This was a special meal and very memorable.

A traditional Romanian meat dish topped with fried egg and a feta-type cheese. Dracula’s House Stew

Pan-fried Mutton Pastrami

This wonderful donut type dessert filled with jam and topped with a sour cream like whipped cream. Also some apple pie type bites and chocolate ganache layered dessert