retiredmartin

October 2025. Bucharest.

Mrs RM had devised an ingenious plan to get me to trudge round Bucharest in the drizzle taking photos of Instagrammable sights on our 3rd day. Her blog posts will no doubt cover this stuff in fine detail.

Simply mark the points of interest with strawberries which get eaten by bears after your visit. I could see something similar on a Beer Guide app; that would make sure you didn’t tick the same pub twice.

The day starts out at Herastrau Park in the affluent northern suburbs around Ceausescu’s mansion, an area of V60 coffee, French bakeries and florists.

You could be in Paris, except it’s cleaner with less dog mess, and the French aren’t quite as obsessed with Smokie.

The former national park celebrates Mitterrand, Shakespeare and Jacko,

but their rip-off of Arc de Triomphe is a bit of a let-down.

Three metro stops into town the compact Old Town has a couple of dozen strawberries for Mrs RM to attack, starting with the courtyard of Manuc’s Inn (top), target for the (few) coachloads of tourists.

Bucharest isn’t a match for Bruges or Berlin or Bath, but there’s loads of ornate churches to explore,

and the pedestrianised streets around Strada Selari look notably less seedy than on our 2018 trip…

…..mostly.

More schoolchildren and gentlefolk (hey ! that’s us) than 7 years ago, when the Old Town seemed at times a Red Light district for Russian tourists. What can have changed ?

Artisan ice cream, an ornate bookshop (Cărturești Carusel) to almost rival that one in Porto,

and a burger menu celebrating our Royal Family.

Suddenly, we both felt hungry.