Bucharest and Wallachia(Southern Romania) The 'Dove' Hotel at the Eastern Edge of Bucharest Beautiful inside too,  AND air-conditioning. Dinner at the Dracula Club.  We saw both the real Draula sites (Vlad the Impaler) and the mythical life of Brym Stoker's Dracula Our waiter looked the part. And the floorshow was pretty good.  The food in Romania was better than I had expected. We had hoped that we'd loose the extra weight from France. Bucharest was a mixture of old, 'new' and the legacy of Communism.
Some of the old architecture was great. This is a new building, built by Couchecu in 1984, to house the central communist buracracy.  "The People's House" is the second largest single building in the world, behind the Pentagon. For miles and miles, all we see are these very drab apartment buildings - for the people. This orthodox church stands over Dracula's Bucharest Palace. Only the lower levels survive.  Who knows was went on here. They were still working on restoration. Bucharest wasn't all dreary. This was Dracula's main palace in Targoviste.  It was here that he invited 15 nobles to lunch and impaled all but 2. Vlad Dracul was Dad.  Vlad Tepes was 'The Impaler', Dracu(la).  Dad was a rough guy too, as were the times.   Back to the Trip page