After finishing up with my work to-dos this morning, I finally had the opportunity to explore the city. I began by visiting the Parliament Palace, which is the second largest governmental building in the world (behind the Pentagon) and was constructed during the mid-eighties during Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign prior to the fall of communism.
The sheer size of the building was indeed impressive. It is 12 stories with over 3,000 rooms and covers approximately 3.5 million square feet. Apparently, roughly 1/10 of the city was razed in order to allow for the building’s development.
Here's the view looking back from the entrance...
Once inside the building, I was able to do a self-guided tour that more or less consisted of a one way funnel with numerous optional stops in selected rooms. My favorite room was definitely the parliamentary chamber, which you can see in the pictures below. The ceiling was particularly impressive. 
Here are some more pictures from inside the building...
After the visit, I walked back towards my hotel and toured the historical section of Bucharest, which was nearby. Based on the description in the guidebook and comments from the hotel concierge, I expected a complete disaster area that literally hadn’t been rebuilt following the devastation in WWII. But nonetheless I was intrigued and wanted to see what it was like.
Once I began to tour the streets of the old town, I could see that the picture that had been painted in my head was only partially true. Sure, there were some old apartment buildings that literally looked as though they had been deserted since WWII, but there were also plenty of lively shops, cafes and other businesses that blended rather seamlessly into the area. It was definitely an area in transition, but at the same time I found it to be a very interesting place to walk around.
On one of the streets I found a restaurant with an interesting (and somewhat insecure) claim on the awning (see picture below). With my interest piqued, I decided to take a quick look inside and was very glad that I did as it turned out to be a pretty incredible place. Here are some pictures of the internal architecture / décor.
I then walked around Revolution Square, a focal point of the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 where Ceausescu gave his last speech. (Apparently, Romania was the only former Eastern Bloc country that overthrew its communist government forcefully and executed its former leader…and his wife, for that matter.) The statue is of Iuliu Maniu, a former prime minister who died while imprisoned under the communist regime. The ruin that became of his life is represented by the adjacent statue of the tree with broken branches.
Next I went to the Romanian National Art museum, which was between the old town and my hotel. There were two primary collections to see – Romanian Art and European art – and I decided to go with the Romanian Art exhibition since there was only enough time to see one of them. Overall, I found it to be quite interesting – there was a lot of religious art in particular. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures aside from those taken outside the museum, though, as none were allowed unless you paid a hefty surcharge.
After the museum, I walked around some more and found a nice park not far from the hotel. There were plenty of people there enjoying the warm Spring weather and late-afternoon sun.
I also saw some interesting churches, which were all quite small, as well as the opera house…
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