Next Day

After breakfast we left our ship and followed the Romanian countryside to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Our pit stop was a bit touristy but soon our journey continued..In the afternoon, we visited the most famous building in Romania, The Palace of Parliament (known universally as Casa Poporului or The House of the People it was built during the darkest days of the Ceausescu's regime. It is the largest building in the world after the Pentagon. Originally designed to house almost all the organs of the communist state, it today plays host to the Romanian parliament and is a conference centre.

A week-long series of riots and protests in late December of 1989 overthrew the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu . The increasingly violent riots culminated in a cursory trial and the execution of Ceausescu and his wife Elena.

We would stop at the Revolution Memorial as we continued our city tour in the dark, finally ending up at our Marriott Hotel originally part of Ceausescu's grand complex.

In the evening, we were taken for our farwell dinner to Pescarus Restaurant for a traditional folklore Romanian show. Unfortunately it turned out to be a tourist trap. A zillion seats stuffed together with no access to viewing the program, The pictures are blurred as we made a desparate effort to capture the costumes as they rushed to the stage — or whatever it was.

We returned to the hotel to have our own good-byes. (below)

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Next Day

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