Ruse and Bucharest; The end of the cruise but not of our travels!

 

The Palace of the Parliament is the world's largest civilian building!

We were at day 24 of our cruise, this would be our last full day on the boat. We were on the included excursion into the town of Ruse, Bulgaria. After walking with the tour, we explored the old town on our own, eventually returning to the boat for lunch and then spent the rest of the day relaxing. We were feeling the effects of three weeks of cruising and just decided to take it easy.

In "Ruse"!

Ruse itself is a nice enough town with large public squares and pedestrian-friendly avenues.

That evening our boat made it's final cruise to the port town of Giurgiu, Romania. From here we would be bused into Bucharest for our final day of the standard tour.

The next morning we had our luggage collected for our drive to Bucharest. We departed the Lofn and were bused to the town; about an hours ride.

Bucharest is quite a large city. It still exudes a bit of a Soviet vibe in a lot of the architecture, including the Parliament Building, said to be the largest civilian building in the world with over 3,000 rooms. There is also a canal passing through town which gives it an interesting twist. I think though, that I was a bit tired of passing through Eastern European cities as I wasn't really struck by anything here. 

Bucharest's canal.

We had a lunch here.

We did get to visit a large park in town which holds examples of various historical houses and such.

We spent the night at a very nice hotel that Viking had set up for us. We had a meal with some of the folks we had traveled with and called it a night. The next day, we would be flying to Istanbul!

Goodbye Bucharest and Romania!

Pictures of Ruse and Bucharest.