Bucharest city tour

• Sunday 28th June 2015

One of the easiest ways to see a city is to use a Hop On/Hop Off sightseeing bus. Our hotel was a short walk from one of the stops of this Bucharest city tour bus. We parked our hired car at the hotel and jumped aboard the bus. The tour starts north of the city at Herastrau Park and heads towards the center of Bucharest, passing by the Palace of Parliament and Romanian Patriarchate before heading back up north to the starting point. The bus operating hours are 10am-10pm daily. The frequency along this 9.5 miles route is every fifteen minutes. The adult ticket price as of our visit was 25 Lei and is valid for 24 hours.

The photos are not in the order they were taken.

We passed some interesting building on our route.

Plenty of large advertising billboards

Place of worship looks out of place, or maybe it's the white building on the right. Either way, one of them should not have been built here.

Don't know who he is but he looks miserable. I would be too if I'd the rest of my body stolen.

Defeated by the lamppost that blocked the Novotel hotel.

The old making out with the new.

Perfect place to have a team meeting. Right below the man and his horse statue.

Anybody lose a large nut? It can be found in Bucharest, were locals use it to sit on.

We passed the impressive Palace of Parliament. More on this when we pay it a visit later on in this trip.

Not sure if they are selling the spade or shoes on this billboard. Maybe they are just using it to cover the old building. Check out the monument on the roof. Looks like the Romans built it. They couldn't find a hill so they just built it on top of a biggest building they could find.

Water park. But if it doesn't have a coaster,  we're not interested.

We passed a big shopping area. The big M always finds its way around the world and Romania was not going to escape it either.

The women and child statues got kicked off from the top by the mean man so they have to make do at the bottom.

The tour got too much for some. I guess it's old age.

The Arc de Triomphe replica in Bucharest was being refurbished. It's been over a year now and they still have not finished the work.

Bus stop covered with some weird cartoons.

Nice building covered with silly advertisement.

That lamppost again keeps on ruining my shots.

The bird-man statue.

Modern buildings look out of place in Romania.

Our tour bus.

The local tram.

We finished the day by having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. I know some of my friends are obsessed with HRC and count them, but for me they suck. My order was messed up by our waiter. He admitted his mistake but another waiter came over and tried to act smart, saying this was what I ordered. I'm not stupid enough to not know what I ordered and what it should looks like. I was not happy but went ahead and ate the meal brought to me. Soon after the manager came out and admitted they got it wrong.
He didn't charge us for my meal, and also offered all of us free deserts.

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