Mistake number 3 from 2009 was eating the so-called hotel’s breakfast, which had mould, or at least suspicious grey speckles on the bread. That one I fixed! The Accor Group hotel had an excellent breakfast, once I’d figured out where to find plates and that I shouldn’t even be looking for a tray. The only issue was that the apple juice drink seemed to be just water that had once been shown an apple but the orange juice drink was nice. Not orange juice but it had some colour and flavour. I’ll try the raspberry drink tomorrow.

Over breakfast, I watched the big TV and managed to deduce that the breaking news from the National Cathedral was in fact an inauguration ceremony. Well, I like a cathedral and Google Maps informed me that this is a controversial one, since it’s very big and very gaudy and very expensive. It’s actually less than two kilometres away, next to the People’s Palace, which is one of the sights of Bucharest and also a place where I can pick up the hop-on hop-off bus that I planned to use to discover the city.

Mind you, after breakfast I came back to my room and scrolled and sort of was lazy. Last night was late and the clocks changed and so on. So I was sort of surprised by the time I’d walked all the way down to the cathedral that the ceremony was still in full flow, and that half of Romania seems to be packed in around it, despite the number of people I saw walking away from it as I approached. It’s a pretty big cathedral with a pretty big courtyard, all the roofs gleaming gold and according to the live footage from the TV and on the big screens out the front, very, very gold inside. I’m strongly reminded of the Mango Musselini’s changes to the Oval Office and the White House’s East Wing. I think he’d really like this cathedral.

It actually manages to overpower the People’s Palace next door, which is quite a feat considering that’s the heaviest building in the world. No idea how they weigh large buildings but it’s very big and very solid-looking and yet somehow doesn’t seem to even dominate its own square anymore. I don’t know if it’s usually open to the public, or if it’s open on weekdays but you couldn’t get near it today. At the opposite end is a semi-circular square (in the town architecture sense rather than the strict geometric sense) and that is just a big car park for tour buses, as is the road leading up to Union Square. I had an odd encounter with an older Romanian woman who handed me a phone, saying “Samsung, Samsung!” quite urgently and pointing at the fountains. Ok, you want a picture with the fountains. Why are you standing behind me? And when I’ve taken the photos, why are you miming swiping on your hand and repeating “Samsung! Camera! Camera! Samsung!”? I have no idea what happened. I hope she wanted a gallery of pictures of her with the fountain and I hope she found someone who could do whatever else it was she wanted because I left utterly confused.

At Union Square, I discovered that the hop-on hop-off bus doesn’t operate in the winter. As it only started in late August after several years’ suspension, I thought it would keep going for a while. That had been my plan – transport and information all in one. Well, I’d been planning to get to know the metro later in the week so that came a bit early. Faced with a ticket machine and four options to put passes on a magnetic ticket, I opted for a week pass. I don’t need a week but the next option was 10 journeys and I don’t know how many I’ll use and whether it’ll be a hassle to top it up. £7.73 for unlimited metro rides while I’m here seems fine to me. So I took the metro north to the park next to Free Press House, then jumped back on it for one more stop because there’s a supermarket next to the next metro station, whereas it’s 22 minutes each way on foot to the nearest one from the park metro station. The supermarket turned out to be a fairly large Carrefour Market in the basement of a shopping centre, so I stocked up on enough basics to get through the day, got back on the metro (there, three journeys gone already) and went to have lunch in the park.

My plan to walk through the park was scuppered by an open air museum. I’m sure it’s interesting and it’s gone on my list to do Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning but it meant I had to leave the park which at least took me to Arcul de Triumf, Bucharest’s answer to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, which also has a roundabout around it where no one seems to know the rules. This one isn’t quite as big or as bad as the one in Paris but I wouldn’t want to drive round it. And then it was some 15-20 minutes of walking up the busy avenue to Free Press House at the other end.

I remember it being bigger in 2009. I also don’t remember seeing it from this angle. I remember the lake and feeling like it would be nice to spend some time enjoying the lake and the park and I have no idea why I didn’t just do that. I did today. It’s a massive park with a pretty massive lake in it, surrounded by orangey yellowy green autumnal trees. But now my feet hurt. I’ve still got lots to see in Bucharet but it was a late and stressful night and my plans got scuppered by the lack of tourist bus and I was at least present for a moment in history and I decided to come home. That meant figuring out the bus. Not the HOHO bus but the ordinary one. That was my first mistake in 2009, the lack of validation. However, in 2025 you can either use an app or text a number or just tap your contactless card on the reader. It made a hideous beep but then the screen flashed green and although it was entirely in Romanian, I eventually took the green a a sign that it had worked, even though it had made a hideous noise. So that was another mistake re-done and repaired.

I popped out later to one of the two small supermarkets on the other side of the road (four crossings, I think) to get something to drink. Nice to know they’re there but I’ll probably not think to get food until halfway through the afternoon most days, like I usually do.

Plans for tomorrow are exciting and not scary, once I’ve figured out the bus that takes up the second part of the journey…