With Nev and Anthony along we took a trip on the Metro and I made my return to the Casa Poporului.
Having established that the City Guide has the entrance on the wrong side of the building we eventually found our way to the tour entrance (no signs even in Romanian!).
Slightly confusingly the ticket office was closed with a sign saying that the English tour is at every hour – given it was 11:15 this was a little
disappointing. Fortunately my mastery of Romglish enabled me to overhear someone saying that the next English tour was at 11:30 – so presumably very hour rather than at every hour!
The ticket office opened at 11:25 and following the scramble for tickets it was time for the security check that took us to 11:45 before the tour party set off.
The scale of the rooms is such that the camera flash is nowhere near adequate to provide a decent picture – making the “camera tax” seem all the more excessive!
Most of the rooms in the “public” areas are now set up to host conferences and business events and the scale is very impressive, particularly with those rooms with high skylighted ceilings.
The tour provides a break half-way round to recover from the stair climbing and eventually gets to the lower level balcony for a view down towards Piata Unirii.
Despite one and a half hours of wandering the building we had probably seen no more than 10% of the inside.
After lunch on Piata Unirii we made our way back on the Metro to pick up the bags so I could drive Nev and Anthony to the airport and get my dose of stress for the day.
Having established that the City Guide has the entrance on the wrong side of the building we eventually found our way to the tour entrance (no signs even in Romanian!).
Slightly confusingly the ticket office was closed with a sign saying that the English tour is at every hour – given it was 11:15 this was a little
disappointing. Fortunately my mastery of Romglish enabled me to overhear someone saying that the next English tour was at 11:30 – so presumably very hour rather than at every hour!The ticket office opened at 11:25 and following the scramble for tickets it was time for the security check that took us to 11:45 before the tour party set off.
The scale of the rooms is such that the camera flash is nowhere near adequate to provide a decent picture – making the “camera tax” seem all the more excessive!
Most of the rooms in the “public” areas are now set up to host conferences and business events and the scale is very impressive, particularly with those rooms with high skylighted ceilings.
The tour provides a break half-way round to recover from the stair climbing and eventually gets to the lower level balcony for a view down towards Piata Unirii.Despite one and a half hours of wandering the building we had probably seen no more than 10% of the inside.
After lunch on Piata Unirii we made our way back on the Metro to pick up the bags so I could drive Nev and Anthony to the airport and get my dose of stress for the day.
The good news is that now I know some postcards have at least got out of Romania, and as long as Nev remembers to post them they should be arriving on the family doormats soon!
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