Eastern Danube, Day 2: Exploring Bucharest

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Today is a day on our own to explore Bucharest. After a fairly standard buffet-style breakfast at our hotel, we set out to do some sightseeing. We stopped at the tourist information office in the area under the nearby square and learned how to do the local hop-on hop-off bus tour operated by Bucharest’s public transportation agency. After a short wait, a bus came and picked us up.

We expected the usual hop-on hop-off bus experience where they give you cheap earbuds and you listen to a recorded narration in your choice of language. There was no such narration, but instead a QR code that did not work was posted next to our seat. By dissecting the QR code URL, Kenna figured out how to get the audio narration, which helped a lot.

After touring through city through areas that we had largely explored on foot yesterday, the bus took us north to Bucharest’s “Free Press Square”. We decided to hop off at this point and walked a short distance to the Ethnographic Museum. This is an outdoor museum with examples of historical dwellings and churches from many parts of Romania, largely from the 18th and 19th century. The dwellings differed considerably from each other due to the varying lifestyles in different areas. Particularly notable were the churches that had been relocated to the site. They had high steeples and obvious crosses, and the ornate decor of the interiors was particularly impressive.

We then continued further south to Bucharest’s Arcul de Triumf, modeled after Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and probably contributing to Bucharest’s tagline as “The Paris of the East.” It was not straightforward to walk to the Arcul itself (we found no underground passageways as in Paris), so we just walked around it to the bus stop where we hopped onto another bus to take us back to the hotel.

Tired after a considerable amount of walking, we decided to relax for a while in our hotel room. Having had authentic Romanian food last night, we opted instead for pizza at a small nearby pizza place.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to the Eastern Danube. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.