So. Bucharest for the second time in 8 months. I actually started this before finishing the October blog. God I’m shit at this stuff.
Some things I didn’t do this time around, including a visit to Brasov and Dracula’s Castle, is in the October 2025 post so I recommend you read that first perhaps. It’s also likely to have more in the way of fun facts about Bucharest, getting around, prices etc. LINK HERE. I’m actually going to assume you’ve read it beforehand.
Day One
On this occasion my mate Peter and I flew Ryanair from Stansted to get cheap-ish flights (£185 each), which required petrol and a £62 each airport hotel stay in time to catch the 6:20am flight. Said flight took around 3 hours, so with the 2 hour time difference it was midday once exiting departures.
After bumping into my pals (the Gogledd Girlies gang we’ll meet later!) we decided to Uber the 40 minute journey into town. Although it cost just £15, I did miss not taking the £1 train into the centre like last time!
We stayed at the 4* Hotel Berthelot to the north of the old town and circa a 20 minute walk away. At a cost of £30 each per night including breakfast it was great value, although 3* I argue was more fitting. The room was rather small so we had a job rearranging the furniture to separate the twin beds!
With half the day behind us and running on 3 hours sleep, it was never the plan to do much today.
We walked into the old town for a light dinner, past Revolution Square and the impressive University library. I tried lahmacun for the first time which was kind of minced beef with finely chopped tomato, garlic and pepper on a thin tortilla whilst Pete opted for some very decent falafels and we shared a jug of homemade lemonade. Nowhere near worth £30 all in but given the location it did the job.
From here we walked 20 minutes south, over the Dâmbovița river to the Palace of Parliament building, which you will recall is the heaviest building in the world weighing an estimated 4.1 million tonnes!
At this point we did plan on walking the perimeter of the palace to arrive at the National Cathedral of Romania (the largest Orthodox church by height and value in world). Sadly, whilst Pete is proudly very active, he is approaching 75 and with tiredness catching up we instead headed back to the hotel.
I decided against a siesta in the hope that I’d get a better sleep overnight so chose to walk around a nearby park – again somewhere I visited last time – and walked back through an area with several buildings at risk of collapse (see walking tour section of 2025 blog).
Later that evening, with the rain fall heavy, we did little more than visit a steak restaurant a 7 minute walk from the hotel. As I’m not one for steak I had a delicious burger that I struggled to fit in my gob but a much better choice than lunch value-wise. Pete’s pork ribs, my burger, 2 wines, a bottle of water, a coke and two desserts was about £35 each including tip.
That was that for the day come 10pm, as we had a nice early (but not early early) start tomorrow.
Day Two
A visit to the Mina Unirea / Slănic Prahova salt mine didn’t really identify itself on my last visit, so it was good to do something new, what felt for the first time so far this trip!
We booked THIS DAY TOUR through Viator for £42 each. After breakfast we walked to the pick up point at the large University square, grateful I knew exactly where we needed to be. The tour guide, provided by Gray Line Tours, was bang on time and it only took a few seconds to realise Lucien was the guide for Dracula’s Castle last year!
The trip north to Slănic took about two hours, given that Bucharest is one big traffic jam, which actually gave time to start writing the blog up to this point!
You arrive at the car park then buy your ticket and jump on a minibus that takes you 208 metres down through a meandering tunnel and voila, you walk through a door and greeted with an enormous underground space.
Fun facts GALORE incoming strap yourselves in…
The mine was first documented in 1429 and has enough salt to meet global demand for the next 1,000 years. It opened as a tourist attraction in 1970.
It has the purest air quality anywhere ON THE PLANET with radiation levels 80% less than on the surface.
At 2.9 million cubic metres it’s the largest salt mine in Europe and welcomes 300,000 visitors a year.
The tour guide did give a potentially outstanding fun fact but it may be a little wide of the mark after digging a little deeper (pun intended). Salt was once used as a payment method for Roman soldiers in the area and the word “salary” comes from the world salt. This wasn’t quite the case as they were paid in coins, but obviously said payment “salarium” did go towards salt as a dietary staple. However, Google tells me “the Latin word salarium refers to a stipend, allowance, or pension. It is the etymological root of the English word “salary,” and is famously linked to sal (the Latin word for salt)”. So make your own mind up.
Upon entering the mine, you certainly had that wow factor, walking along the carved expanse spanning a few corridors. By the time we aimlessly walked for about half an hour the initial reaction wore off a bit as I enjoyed my first ever hot white chocolate beverage.
It was strange to change my mind, but stuck in traffic on the way back to Bucharest, I wondered if a 4 hour drive with 2 hours at the site was worth the £43. If you have anything else to do in Bucharest, probably not. I decided the most interesting parts were actually the information boards, but these were right at the entrance to the mine. I would like to see them spread out more along a specified route.
Back in the city, we were just in time to collect our match tickets from a central hotel, as is the norm, although this was slightly delayed by Peter picking a fight with a low hanging tree branch, which he lost.
This was cause for our first meaningful beer of the trip, and via a quick round trip to the hotel to stick a replica shirt on, spent the rest of the night drinking, card-playing and moaning about the world with several friends up until 2:30am.
Day Three
Peter was discreet enough to allow me a good lie in this morning, skipping breakfast having had SIX large slices of pepperoni a few hours before, after the beers.
Significant glugs of water (and the odd Immodium) worked well and by the time we booked an Uber I felt surprisingly fresh and energised.
Our destination was the Catedrala Mantuirii Neamului, or the National Cathedral of Romania. Repeating a fun fact from October; the tallest and largest Orthodox church in the world.
When accidentally passing this back then, there were thousands of people queuing up for some event. It was rather surprising then that the main building wasn’t open and didn’t look fully constructed yet.
A long walk around half the perimeter of the adjoining parliament building, and a coffee later, it was time for lunch.
Luca is Romania’s version of Greggs in the UK. A seeded pretzel and a kinda’ sausage roll cost a paltry £1.33 and was plenty for lunch. My advice to anyone on a budget (and not a diet) is to locate your nearest one of these, you could eat a wide range of stuff including sandwiches and pizza for like £10 a day.
Next up was the Bucharest Museum of Football, tucked into a five-storey building in the old town. I considered this on my last visit but ultimately chose the nearby, very good History of Communism Museum instead.
Considering I’ve traded about 30,000 items of football memorabilia in the past 15 years, I’m not really one for autographs and shirts.
Nevertheless, it was difficult not to be impressed buy the range of signed and match worn shirts from around the globe. They did have a single nod to Wales – a shirt from a Romania tie in 1971. For £8 admission it was good value if you’re into football.
Now fed, hydrated and nearing my mandatory 10,000 steps, the stars aligned when meeting my drinking buddies (showing varying signs of yesterday’s antics) and the afternoon drinking began. When they ran out of Somersby cider, we sold out the Smirnoff Ice (old skool) and had a good go at finishing off this particularly cheap bars allocation of Becks and Bacardi Breezers.
It was a lovely touch that my wife sent me a few quid to buy a round for everyone. Mikayla and my “Gogledd Girlies” haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting each other but it’s lovely to know she understands what wonderful company they are, especially on predominantly solo trips I undertake.
This gesture was actually shortly after I popped into Romania’s most famous bookshop, Cărturești Carusel, which happened to be about 10 meters away from our table! I thought it would be nice to buy her a Harry Potter book in Romanian to add to the collection. Only at the checkout did I wonder how the fuck was she supposed to enjoy it. Lolz never mind, too late.
The drinks lasted 30 minutes later than planned, so our Uber to the ground an hour before kick-off was a little nervy, given the traffic and questionable quality of driver.
Fear not, we made it in good time for the anthems after a VERY thorough security check. If I hid a lighter up my arse I think boss man would’ve located and confiscated it… Peter’s sun cream (?!?!) was also never to be seen again but my 1kg power bank was okay…
The game itself was your typical Walas away game = not very good. The Romanians were good value for their 2-1 win but writing this a day after the game, I’m starting to worry about the short term success. It didn’t help that manager Craig Bellamy stated we were going to dominate before the game. Utter bollocks. Some good performances from youngsters and newly-capped lads but ultimately it stretched our winless away-in-a-friendly streak to EIGHTEEN years…
What you don’t want, dehydrated after a loss, is to be unnecessarily held at the ground for 45 minutes, which ended any aspirations of more beer. I think that Pete and I were extremely lucky to book a taxi within five minutes and had time to catch a burger before calling it a night.
Day Four
The decision to have a period of sobriety since kick-off last night paid dividends today. Pete went nearby for Church whilst I enjoyed a lie in and light breakfast, in the process of changing my plans half a dozen times.
My main aim was to visit a glorified swimming pool, but couldn’t really spent all afternoon there before our 11:30pm flight. Ergo, after midday checkout we walked for half an hour back to the centre to an absolutely crap shopping centre with the only highlight being its McDonald’s open for lunch.
It was time for me to leave Pete at this point and head to aforementioned glorified swimming pool to waste as much as the rest of the afternoon as possible.
Therme Bucharest is a thermal spa resort located in the middle of literally nowhere to the north of the airport (yet only a £15 Uber from town). It has a number of pools, a beach resort, wellness facilities and over a dozen cool looking slides. I’m literally sat on a lounger right now writing days 3 and 4!!
On weekends 4.5 hours were £25 and gave access to the pools, beach and slides areas. I had a few dips in the pools and did eventually look at the slides but after 4 days of pizzas and burgers I couldn’t emotionally handle the weight limit test and the one slight without such a limit I couldn’t find!
From Therme it’s only a five minute bus (50p) / Uber to the airport so well worth considering if you’ve got hours spare before check-in or checkout. The lockers were plenty big enough for my holdall and you can rent towels (£5ish) and flipflops.
There we go then, not really much else to say. Our flight landed at Stansted at 12:30am, an excruciating 4.5 hour drive home for ZERO hours sleep before another 90 minute drive to Swansea for work (a team building event to boot!) on the Monday morning. Yippee!
Across the two blogs, honestly the only thing I would have done would be entrance to the parliament. The free walking tour mentioned in my October 2025 visit remains my best recommendation. In total this trip cost roughly £750, which was more than I expected.
Thanks for reading
How Not 2 Life 