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Today is a bit of a milestone as this evening we catch the last overnight train of this marathon journey. However, that is not until 18:00 this evening and we have a late checkout with our hotel room until 17:00. So today we have the time to do a bit of exploring.

We are staying at the Hotel Lido which is a nice hotel in a very old building, and you can see this in the first photo below as the elevator is one of those acient things with two sets of doors.

The city is a perplexing mix of old grand buildings that are generally in a poor state or repair if not entirely abandoned and a number of nice parks.

One of the key attractions for visitors to this city is the Palace of the Parliament. It was built during soviet times by the order of Nicolai Ceausecu the dictator of Romania as part of his systematization.

If you, the reader, are not old enough to have memories of the period of the Soviet Union, I suggest reading the wiki entries in the links above.

The final photo above is of a sculpture located in front of the Bucharest Art Gallery, it is called Cart with Harlequin, I could not find a wiki link for it.

The Bucharest train station was choas in an entirely different way to Chinese railway stations. It was only hundreds of people not thousands. There was no pushing and shoving in security and ticket queues. There was just mobs blocking all doors to the train carriages, and pigeons and their droppings all over the station floor.

We were all delighted to find that our sleeper cabins were 2 bunk, and some even had private toilet and shower. That meant, at least for the couples, we had privacy.