I had such a great time today with one of my best friends, Dominique. We’ve been best friends since attending Rollins College but we don’t often get a chance to get together (you know how life is), but whenever I visit NYC we somehow manage a visit together. We spent the day wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, although I think we did more talking than looking at art:) Thanks Dominique, it was so great to see you and catch up!

Brendan and I are in New York City for the weekend and even though both of us are recovering from the horrible cold that is going around, we’re having a good time. Brendan is actually here working and I’m just tagging along to have some fun and explore the city.

The New York Public Library Reading Room.

Bryant Park. Even though it was windy and cold the sun felt great, so there were a lot of people sitting around the park soaking it in.

Ahhh…spring! It was so exciting to see some flowers!

Grand Central Station. I love using a slow shutter speed to get the movement of all the people moving through the station.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral was extremely crowded because of Good Friday.

A quick post before we have to catch a taxi to the airport. Our last day in Bucharest was spent walking the city and exploring the some of places we’ve missed.  Here’s a few pictures from the day.

I can’t believe we ran into a wedding.  They stopped right in the middle of this rotary around the Arc de Triomphe.

We walked three miles to get to the Hard Rock Cafe, only to find it was closed for a special event.  The Hard Rock Cafe is new here, it opened in January.  We probably walked about 8-9 miles and I was exhausted!

We have an even longer flight home, ughh 11 hours, because we are going against the wind.  See you back in the US!

We went out into the Romanian countryside to a town called Sinaia on an early 8:30 train and arrived in Sinaia around 10 a.m. We were lucky we got to ride on one of their new rapid trains, and it was surprisingly crowded. This was the first train I’ve been on in Europe where you actually had to choose which train you wanted to take, had an assigned car and seat.

We always like to get out of the city so we can to get a feel for the country. When we left Bucharest, the land was flat and mostly farmland but as we got further away we entered the Prahov Valley and you could see the snow covered mountains in the background. As we entered the valley, the train ran alongside a small river which had a lot of trash in it. The countryside appears very poor and rural and there are still a lot of stray dogs even when you get out of the city. When we arrived at the train station we decided to get our tickets back to Bucharest. We thought we had bought round trip tickets yesterday, but there was a very nice family on the train sitting next to us that spoke English and checked our tickets for us and apparently we only had one way tickets. Good thing we checked! While Brendan went to get the tickets I went to the restroom and that was quite an experience! Their idea of a restroom is a hole in the ground and it definitely was not in the most sanitary conditions. I thought it would be funny to take a picture of it, but then thought that would just be too gross!

Sinaia is actually a popular ski area, so there were a lot of hotels and the town was a little touristy. We walked a short way out of town to visit the Sinaia Monastary and Peles Castle.

The Sinaia Monastary

Peles Castle

I had to pay to take pictures inside again. I guess I shouldn’t complain, a lot of places won’t let you take pictures at all.

A gorgeous chandelier made of Murano glass. This reminded me of our trip to Venice, where Murano glass comes from.

King Carol I built Peles Castle. Construction began in 1875 and took 39 years to complete. It was the first European castle to have central heating, electricity and vacuuming!

For some reason we saw a lot of stray puppies today. There were some in the train station and on our walk to the castle. This was just heart breaking! This poor little puppy was afraid to come out, while his brothers and sisters were out playing in the snow with their mom and dad. I just wanted to grab him in my arms and take him home with me!

Today we saw the real Bucharest. They have a long way to go. I think we are the only tourists here (at least Americans) and we stand out like a sore thumb. While most people speak English, there are still a lot of people who do not. We actually thought it would be very similar to Prague, but Prague is much more tourist friendly and I think has realized how tourism can help their economy, while Bucharest has not done much to promote tourism and we have not felt as welcome here. They are in desperate need of improving their infrastructure

A beggar asking for a handout as we walk by.

Piata Universitatii - This is where the 1989 Revolution began and this cross commemorates the first person who lost their life. Notice the Intercontinental Hotel in the background; this is where journalists were staying when the revolution started.

Bucharest has so many cars! And no place to park them, so people just park on the sidewalk. This makes walking the city very difficult. Crossing the street is also challenging. You must obey the signals otherwise you’ll get run over. At crosswalks where there is no signal, drivers are supposed to stop for pedestrians, but you usually have to step out into the street and challenge them to stop, and pray that they do!

We walked the steps of the revolution on our way to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Once again I had to pay to take pictures…50 Ron this time, which is about $20. The museum was nice, but there were not a lot of English descriptions, so we really had no idea what we were looking at. When we first got there I didn’t realize you had to pay extra to take pictures, so I got in a little bit of trouble:( They were very wary of us, and kept an eye on us the whole time. Do we look untrustworthy?

Romanians make beautiful embroidery.

And hand painted eggs.

Doesn’t this look like a Dr. Seuss character?

This is what a typical building looks like in Bucharest.

We stopped at the train station, Gare de Nord, on our way back to the hotel because we have decided to take a trip out of the city tomorrow to a town called Sinaia in Transylvania to visit Peles Castle. We wanted to make sure we knew where we were going and try to get tickets. This was definitely a challenge as they do not speak English there (very similar to Prague), but I learned a great tip from Rick Steve’s travel guide when we went to Prague, and that’s to write down where you want to go, when, etc. and they can usually figure it out. It worked.

No matter where you go in the world you can always find a McDonald’s!

I feel really bad about the dogs. Doesn’t he look sad:( Although we don’t have a dog, we are both dog people, but we feel the fact that we travel so much isn’t suited for dog ownership…cat’s aren’t as high maintenance. The stray dogs here are dangerous and could have rabies so you’re supposed to keep your distance from them. We saw a lot more today than yesterday and I’m sure it’s because of where we were in the city. I took both these pictures shooting from the hip while we were walking and that’s Brendan’s foot in the lower right hand corner.

After spending yesterday recovering from our flight, mostly sleeping and then getting some dinner. You won’t believe it, but there is a Pizza Hut right around the corner from our hotel. The place was a mob scene, but it was very different from a U.S. Pizza Hut, more like a European cafe, and everyone smokes! We have gotten so used to smoke free environments, it’s really hard to have to be surrounded by smokers.

We spent today just getting oriented to the city and we can definitely feel the roots of Communism here. While there are some beautiful buildings, there are also a lot of run down, dilapidated buildings and I thought traffic in NYC was bad!

When Nicolae Ceauşescu built the Palace of Parliament he had to tear down 1/6 of Bucharest to make room for the second largest building in the world (the first being the Pentagon). When he did this he tore down mostly apartment buildings forcing people to move to smaller apartments where there wasn’t room for their pets, so they let their dogs run free in the city. Bucharest is now home to over 100,000 stray dogs!

The Palace of Parliament was built in 1984. It took more than 700 architects and three shifts of 20,000 people, working 24 hours a day for five years to build. It has 12 floors, 3100 furnished rooms, 64 reception halls, and this year the NATO summit will be held here.

We took a short tour of the palace. I had to pay an extra 30 Ron (about 15 dollars) for a permit to take pictures.

A side street that we came across.

I have a love/date relationship with my Dansko clogs. I love them because they are so comfortable but I hate them because they conspire against me to humiliate me whenever possible, it has nothing to do with me;) The very first day I wore them I fell flat on my face walking down Newbury Street in Boston and today was just as bad. We arrived at JFK and we stopped at the restroom on the way to the Crown Room, as I was exiting the restroom there was a small rise in the floor and I tripped/lost my balance and went flying and landed hard on my knees and wrists. According to Brendan who was waiting for me across the walkway, it was anything but graceful! Of course I was carrying two bags, which also went flying. All these people came running to help me…it was quite embarrassing. Luckily there was no major damage to me or my equipment, although one of my knees is quite sore, but I’ll survive.

Hanging out in the Crown Room…

Our plane getting prepped for the flight…

Checking email

Watching the planes land. I thought this was a cool picture because you can see my reflection in the mirror.

Next time I’ll be posting from Bucharest!

Bucharest! And today is my birthday! Today is going to be a very loooong day. We fly from Boston to JFK and have a 6 hour layover before our flight to Bucharest. We really didn’t have a choice, it was either that flight or a flight where the layover was too short and we didn’t want to miss our next flight. So we’ll be hanging out in the Delta Crown Room trying to mentally prepare for a 10 hour flight to Bucharest. This will be the longest flight we’ve ever been on. Our previous longest flight was from Miami to Santiago, Chile in South America, which was 8.5 hours. I find flying eastbound to be the worst. You leave in the evening and are supposed to sleep on the flight and then arrive early in the morning there. I can never sleep on planes, and if I do, it isn’t a lot, so I usually spend the next day recovering.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking why in the world did you choose to go to Bucharest? So here’s the story…one day Brendan comes home from one of his many consulting trips and says “I know where we’re going next…Bucharest” I’m a little skeptical, “where did you get this idea from”…. “an article in the Delta Airlines Magazine.” Actually it was a special advertising article because Delta just started offering non-stop flights to Bucharest from JFK. So, without even thinking about it I said ok and we booked our trip. It wasn’t until after we booked our trip and I started doing a little research that I realized there really isn’t a lot of travel information about Bucharest. There are only a few travel books and they cover the whole country, with just a little section on Bucharest. So now I’m thinking, this could be an interesting trip!

Some tidbits about Romania:

• Nadia Comăneci is from Romania. She was the winner of 6 Gold Medals in the 1976 Olympics and the first gymnast to ever receive a score of 10 (a perfect score). I still remember watching it!
• Dracula, the novel and character created by Bram Stoker, was based in Transylvania which is located in Romania.
• Until the 1989 revolution, Romania was a Communist state. It’s last Communist leader was Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was captured along with his wife after the revolution, put on trial for genocide and both were executed.

Bucharest should be really interesting and we’re really excited to get there!

I will be out of the office until Monday, February 25th and can only be reached by email…Brendan and I are headed to somewhere far away where I won’t be able to call in for my phone messages and I don’t even think my wonderful Blackberry will work:(

Where are we going????  You’ll have to check back to find out!  Stay tuned for lots of great travel pictures!

We had a great time in Flagstaff yesterday, although I didn’t take any pictures, I was too busy shopping:)  I bought this beautiful Native American bracelet, plus some other fun stuff.

We had dinner last night in a really cool part of Phoenix on Mill Street.  If you’re ever in Phoenix this seems like a really great part of town, lots of shops and restaurants.  I just can’t ever image living here, our waitress told us it can get up to 120 degrees in the summer!  Right now we’re sitting in the airport waiting for our flight home, which of course is delayed:(