Bucharest, Romania

I woke up late today, around noon, showered, dressed, and got ready to see the sites. I first walked to the National Museum of Romanian History (which has an odd statue of a naked man holding a she-wolf that has a tentacle coming out of her head – I need to brush up on my Roman mythology since I’m not sure if this supposed to be Romulus or Remus) and entered inside. The museum is undergoing some work inside and there weren’t too many rooms for the public to explore. I first walked down to the basement where the national treasures are located – this is the highlight of the museum and there were many ancient, as well as recent, gold artifacts on display. After viewing the Romanian treasures, I walked to the temporary exhibition that was showcasing replica pieces of the base and every panel of Trajan’s Column. This was interesting to me; having studied Trajan’s Column long ago in Art History, I was now able to view each sculpted scene on each panel . . . and there were a lot of them; I’m probably more appreciative of the work that went in to building the column than if I had visited the real thing in Rome. Next, I walked back upstairs and viewed the many funeral stelae, tombstones, and other stone-sculpted pieces on display. Finally, I visited a room that exhibited weapons from medieval times up to the early-twentieth century AD. That was it for the national history museum (Bucharest does have many museums, so the best pieces are undoubtedly scattered across the city). After visiting the museum, I walked to the Stavropoleos Church, which was built in 1724 AD in the Brâncovenesc style; unfortunately for me, as I entered the church grounds, the doors were shut, so I had to content myself with just walking around the outside and viewing the funeral stelae on display around the monastery building. I then walked through the old town and looked at the buildings in the daylight. Soon, my stomach began to whine and I knew I needed to feed the glutton; so I found a very nice restaurant that serves traditional Romanian food. I sat down inside the restaurant and treated myself to a rather large meal of traditional Romanian meatballs on a bed of mashed potatoes, traditional peasant’s beef soup with sour cream and bread, traditional Romanian red sauce chicken stew, and a liter of cranberry juice. After stuffing myself, I walked back outside, but found myself too tired to go on exploring the city. Thus, I returned to the hostel and read some while relaxing, but soon I found myself asleep. I then slept on and off for the remainder of the day, night, and next morning. Obviously all the walking and late night drinking had caught up with me and now I would rest for about sixteen hours to make up for my active lifestyle (and it felt great to sleep in a bed for that long).