#150 Bucharest, Romania

While looking up flights and potential places to visit, I came across Romania. I was curious, but also dubious. As a solo female traveller, I put it on the "maybe" list and moved on. A few months later, I was doing a similar thing, but with friends this time. It was difficult to pick a place that had relatively cheap flights, and somewhere the three of us hadn't already been - again Romania came up. Deciding to be adventurous, we went for it and booked our flights to Bucharest.

The good news is I absolutely loved Romania and would highly recommend it to anyone. It is spectacular in terms of value for money, and it was (surprisingly) clean, modern and safe. Book your flights now!!!

Planning Your Trip to Romania

It's quite hard to find information about Romania that is up to date. TripAdvisor isn't hugely populated with that many reviews, and a lot of blogs or forum posts I found were a few years old, and things can change very fast. So, I found planning our trip took a lot more research and time than it usually would with more popular and mainstream destinations.

Hopefully the information in this blog will be useful, and then after that it's just taking the time and trying to find the newest information as it's the most reliable. We visited early June 2018, which is apparently one of the best times to go because it's good weather but not too hot or crowded like July and August.

Bucharest to Transylvania

There isn't a huge amount to do in Bucharest, and I've read a lot of blogs and instances were people have attempted to visit some of the castles (Dracula!) in Transylvania during a day trip from Bucharest. I have an adjoining post with my experience of Transylvania where you can get more detail - but I would definitely recommend planning a longer trip in Romania (we spent 5 full days) and staying overnight in Transylvania than trying to rush it in a day.

Bucharest Old Town

Bucharest old town (Lipscani) is wonderful, and wandering through the streets can make you feel more like you're in Paris than in Romania. We stayed at two AirBnBs which were located just a few minutes walk and it's a great area to base yourself. It is mostly comprised of bars, cafés and restaurants, and is a hive of activity in the evenings. Even being a tourist trap prices are incredibly reasonable, with a beer costing on average 10lei/€2 and meals usually around 25lei/€5.

The old town is a short walk to the impressive Palace of the Parliament, and a short Uber ride to the wonderful Outdoor Village Museum (Dimitrie Gusti). We didn't get a tour of the Parliament as we felt it may not be time well spent, and were happy to just look at it from the outside. The outdoor museum features very old buildings taken from around Romania and is lovely to walk around. It's priced very cheaply at 15lei/€3 and I think is best enjoyed in the morning before it gets too busy or too hot. 

From the village museum we walked out to the Arcul De Triomf, and from there down a pleasant avenue lined with embassy's to get the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. After a lot of confused wandering around we eventually discovered that the museum has closed, despite all indications online saying it's still open. A little disappointed, we went into the nearby Natural History Museum instead. While it was enjoyable to get inside out of the heat, it wasn't anything special and I wouldn't recommend it. There was again an extra cost to take photos, which we didn't avail of and there was no one around to check we had paid the extra cost either, so it appears to be a money-racket.

Getting Around Bucharest

You have two main travel options of metro or bus which are usually less than 50c a trip, but we ended up using Uber as prices ended up being on average less than €2 per trip, and divided between three of us was very cheap. The great things about Uber is the price is already agreed before you take the journey so there's no nasty surprises at the end, and you can pay online using your card which eliminates the need for carrying around cash. I had never used it before this trip, but would recommend it as the best way to get around cities in Romania.

Also, we noticed there were very few other tourists around. A few seemed to be Eastern European, and most were part of large coach tours. This meant you could see no other tourists on the bus or at the train stations and assume it's not busy, but once you arrived at the attraction in question there could be ten buses parked outside and hundreds of tourists in large groups inside. In general, it's best to try go places first thing in the morning before most of the bus tours arrive.

Therme Spa

I loved this place so much I gave it it's own blog post. It is Europe's largest wellness spa, a huge facility located on the outskirts of the city close to the airport. Entry cost us around €30 for 4.5hours, which included access to all three areas and to whatever treatments were scheduled during our time there (we had a scrub and a beauty treatment called "liquid gold"). It has something for everyone, including an amazing childrens area with an array of slides, and is well worth a visit if you have some spare time.

#149 Barcelona, Spain

I'm Irish, and Spain is the most popular holiday destination for Irish people. Since our weather is a bit damp, as a nation we just can't get enough of the hot Spanish weather.

I, however, do not like hot weather. I do not enjoy sitting by the pool all day working on my tan. I was brought on a few of these sun holidays as a child and the scars still remain.

Now, Barcelona is said to be a sort-of exception to this "sitting  by the pool" rule. A vibrant, fun, cultural city which makes a great city break. I wasn't hugely interested in going, but it's a close-by destination which regularly gets rave reviews by the many who have been. So to cross it off the list, I booked my flights.

On the whole, I did not enjoy Barcelona. I wouldn't hugely recommend it and I would not like to go back. I found that while it was nice, it was in many cases over-hyped and often times disappointing. A fine example of this is all the works by artist Gaudi which dot the city - some are OK, some are overpriced and a bit rubbish. If, like me, you have no interest in art, then most of his works are a waste of your time, despite how much everyone on TripAdvisor can try and tell you how amazing it is.

Weather

You go to Barcelona for the blue skies don't you? Well, we visited in late April and the weather forecast stated there would be rain for the four days of my trip.... This updated the day before we left and stated the first day would be sunny, and the rest wet. So we ran around our first day in a desperate attempt to get some nice photos before the rain hit. As it turned out, it never rained, but we had sore legs and feet from the stress of that first day that it somewhat put a damper on the rest of the days there.

Gaudi

I like to travel cheaply, and more often than not I will avoid paying entrance fees to attractions I have no interest in. Following this logic, I saw the Sagrada Familia cathedral from the outside only, as I did with Casa Batllo. I don't think I missed out hugely as most of the photos you see of these places online are also taken from the outside only. 

We decided to splash out on one attraction, and pay entrance to visit Park Guell. You really need to book a time online (even just a day or two before), as it's a very busy attraction and there are many cases where people show up in the morning for all the timeslots to be already sold out until much later in the day, or totally sold out. Thankfully the website is in English, fast and easy to use and the tickets were sent as pdf to my emails and scanned off my phone at the entrance.

The website however did not inform us of the following: the park is still a work in progress and half of the famous rooftop view was obscured, and the park is a trek to get to. We went to the nearest metro, and then had to walk for a long time down a business district with very few restaurants or cafés. Based on the amount of time and effort it took to get there, plus the disappointing interior, I was unhappy I had spent my money on this attraction.

Castell Montjuic

I really enjoyed this place, and probably because it wasn't hugely over-hyped in the same way as many of the Gaudi works. We got there by getting the funicular halfway up the hill (it's great because it is attached to the metro and you can use your metro travel card, saving money).  Once you get out there is an option to grab a bus, however we decided to walk. It was an uphill walk but nothing too strenuous and there were nice views along the way. Another option is to get the cable car, which does look good but not so much if you're saving money.

Entrance was cheap at €3/5 and the views were fabulous. One of the highlights.

Las Ramblas / La Boquiera Market

Las Ramblas is literally just a long pedestrian avenue with suspicious looking people loitering and others trying to sell grossly overpriced souvenirs. It was an uncomfortable experience and I felt paranoid I was going to be pickpocketed or kidnapped. The only reason to go there is to get to the wonderful La Boquiera market. Among the fish, meat and cheeses there were lots of juices and fruit cups that were great value at around €1.50. Again another gem in our visit.