Americans in ROMANIA (Our HONEST First Impressions) 🇷🇴

[Music] as we enter our 25th country we have nothing left to sugarcoat we're going to share our honest thoughts on this country as we use the transport eat the food and even go on an exclusive tour today we present to you Bucharest like you've never seen a tourist presented before let's Dive Right In This is Romania [Music] yeah I refused it oh you want to try the card actually yeah we tried we're on our favorite public transportation option here in Romania that is the public buses we actually have this bus all to ourselves it's kind of like having a limo service now it's pretty easy because they accept credit cards or they also accept Apple pay now in the b-roll that we got from here today it actually was refused which happened the very first time every other time it was not a big deal you can just put your card or you put your Apple pay even if you don't have a city bus card it's no problem I the buses are comfortable they're all over the place there's amazing routes and even though there is a Metro which we use to get into town not from the airport because we actually cross the land border from the area that was also simple too and the guy was right there at the station to get our Metro tickets for us but there was also kiosk there that we could get them on our own too but around town bus is what we use there's tons of stops there's the traditional cable car there's some really old school ones and there's there's some modern ones as well but we use a traditional bus usually to get from point A to point B around town the bus rides are three lay a person so you can just scan your credit card or your Apple pay account and it's usually pretty easy you don't get a ticket in exchange there's no one who comes on the bus to validate your ticket it's basically the honor System and 99% of the times it works right away behind me is Aral the Triumph or the triumphal Arch it is 27 M High it is of granite and it symbolizes Romania's victory during World War I it was built between 1921 1922 and there are internal stairs which you can climb up to the top but I think those are only open on the weekends it's during the week right now in our travels we've seen a few other arches like this the top number one for us was the arc the Triumph in Paris France but this is a pretty close number two this one looks pretty nice now let's see if we get a little bit closer to it hopefully we can cross cross the road and maybe go up and touch the [Applause] arch I feel like we got to take our chance right out no oh hold on I have to police okay all right we made it yeah this confirms that you can only Vis on the weekends which is fine or go up on the weekend we made it to the ark and with the help of friendly locals there's a bunch of cops around here helping direct traffic and so I just walked up to one of them and asked like if it's accessible like I know the staircase is closed but can we get to it and he said yes I just don't know where the crosswalk is so we're like okay we'll start looking and then this local overheard us talking to the cop and said I think the crosswalk is over there to kind of like was walking in the same direction so she walked us over to it and then she's like but just be careful because I'm not sure if people are going to pause for you around this crazy roundabout everyone's going pretty fast so just be careful get there in one piece we made it in one piece and this place is really really massive and beautiful it's not as big as the one in France but yeah definitely the second best Arc that we've seen in our travels if you're walking around and you want to pay with cash what you pay with is the Romanian Lei they are absolutely beautiful currency notes they they feel pretty cool I don't know what material they're made out of but they're they're fun to have in your pocket they are very colorful and they have the faces of some very significant figures throughout Romanian history the good news is if you do not want to use cash you really don't have to I mean kti and I found one local bakery while we're here in the country that only took cash but and then besides tips every place else takes credit card and if you want to leave a tip you can leave 10% 15% 20% whatever you want to do usually you leave 10 unless there's really good service which uh happens a lot of times at a sit down restaurant then we'll leave the 20% but even with the 10% uh every waiter is very happy they're very grateful to receive the tip and you're not feeling like you're just paying things because you have to also when it's just kti and I out eating like we've never had anyone add a tip or add any additional charts it's the the final bill is what we think is going to be so that's always nice it's not like in America we have to pay additional sales tax you don't know what the final Bill's going to be be whatever it says on the menu just add it up and that's your bill our favorite mode of transportation is definitely the buses but there are so many other options like there's the metro and then there's what a lot of people are using are those I guess electric scooters they're like the modern day Segways they have those laying all around I think it's by the lime company which I think is owned by Uber and then there's also if you want a proper Uber there's Uber cars which you can use here there's bolts there's taxis there's all kinds of options we think the easiest to steal the bus but if you just want to get some fresh air there's also electric bikes so there's a lot of different ways however you want to get around town plus it's very walkable I mean mostly we could walk everywhere we want to but the bus system is so easy to use that we just hop on a bus and pay our thre lay a person and it's no problem at all around this park I think it's a pretty huge Park I mean there's lakes and according to our research this is one of the best places in the city to see a sunrise really not morning people so you kind of have to take our word for it but uh the sunrise over the lake looks absolutely gorgeous we are in King mahai Park or King Michael Park the last king of Romania and we absolutely love when cities have Parks it's a really good compromise because I like the city life people watching buildings bright lights all that kind of stuff and kti is a huge fan of nature so it's a nice compromise when we have a city that offers both behind me is a tribute statue to Michael Jackson in honor of his life and also he performed here in Bucharest and even visited the parliament if you want to hear more about this really funny story visit our friend mat whiting's YouTube channel which will link down in the description below Matt also has a video of former Romanian president chesu whose house we're going to visit next so make sure to check out that video which will link in the description below and his other videos because he does a really good job recapping the history of Romania behind me is Kasa chesu never say that name right sorry but this was built in 1964 it's the 80 room former residence of the Romanian president before the 1989 Revolution where both he and his wife were overthrown and ultimately executed but if you want to tour the house to see what it was like when he did live here they do give guided tours now the sign outside says that you want to reserve about 24 hours in advance so make sure you do that and don't just show up also there's some beautiful peacocks uh walking around here just you know they're a little bit hesitant so I see some people like chasing after them and that's not very nice but uh there's beautiful peacocks there's all kinds of signage it tells you clearly the hours and it looks like there's plenty of guards and attendants at the front who can tell you where you need to go and give you information on a tour the Metro system is also pretty straightforward there's two different ways to buy tickets one is via the kiosk machine which you can get a two trip pass a 10 trip pass a week pass or a month pass but we didn't do any of those passes we went to the attendant and just like when we first arrived in the country the attendant was able to give our tickets right then and there and we're able to go in they give you a ticket in which you scan you go through supposed to go through one at a time and then when you're walking down it's a really nice experience cuz it's nice and cool you get all that breeze From The Underground area and you don't have to wait around too long I think the Metro going one way was basically approaching as we were going down downstairs and in the Metro that we needed to go on we only had to wait maybe a minute or two for it to approach they go pretty fast so you're able to get to your next location pretty [Music] quickly are you recording Smooth once you get to your location there's steps or if you're lucky like we were there's an escalator which you can come up to the surface level and now we're here in the Heart of the City we are at Cravings here in the center of town basically a little bit on the outskirts but we're here for some cinnamon rolls now I know that's not traditional Romanian dessert if you want traditional Romanian dessert you go with papach but I love cinnamon rolls and I think this cinnamon roll SL cinnamon bun whatever the heck you want to call it is my absolute favorite so we had to come out out here and have this today another popular dish is cabbage rolls unfortunately we haven't been able to find vegetarian cabbage rolls now we have found those previously in other countries but we're still in the search for that here in Romania but if you want to see those cabbage rolls and other amazing Romanian food check out our friends Jacob and Jenny they're traveling all around Romania kind of just like we are and they have plenty of videos where they show you all the different meat dishes and all the yummy food I think they even have a video completely dedicated to a food tour and we'll link that down below well after we eat this cinnamon roll that alone is worth a trip here to bukarest the building that I'm standing in front of was built in 1906 during the 40th anniversary of King Carol the first currently it's the office of commemoration of nation's Heroes so you can't go inside unfortunate and there's a lot of security around it but I still recommend coming out here and seeing this bronze Castle gets all of the love and attention and they've set it up like a tourist trap with souvenirs outside and guided tours and all that kind of stuff but it really doesn't have a connection to Vlad tus or you know Dracula besides it looking really cool today we really like Brun Castle but that is because we learned the history about how Queen Marie and King fad lived there and we really enjoyed all the history and the museum that was dedicated to their lives inside so even though bronze Castle gets all of the love and attention this is really cool because this is an exact replica of the actual Fortress or castle that Vlad tepus actually lived in here in Romania now the real one is not in Bucharest it's a little bit outside in ponari but the real one right now was kind of ruined and destroyed by multiple earthquakes over time and if you want to get to it you have to climb, 1400 steps so you can save yourself the steps and save yourself having to use too much of your imagination by just coming to the one here and buest and checking it [Music] out we just finished our tour at the National Bank of Romania Museum and it was pretty incredible now it is a free tour and it's a guided tour and you learn so much but the key is you have to book your reservation at least 2 days in advance so you have to go online and you had to enter in your full name and your passport information and I'm pretty sure they do some kind of background check that's why you have to wait like 2 days but we showed up about 10 minutes early because we didn't want to get left out on the tour the guide spoke pretty fluent English took us all around and showed us different things like vaults that were in The Columns of the building itself like I've never seen mini vaults kind of around the lobby area of a bank and she took us into a big proper Vault and when she had to get like keys from different places and we go in and it was like red and there was gold coins inside of a case it was really cool definitely have never been into a bank vault anywhere and our travels are anytime ever in my life so that was really cool as well we had a lot of really fun people with us sometimes tours can be hit or miss with the people but I really like the group that we had they asked a lot of really good questions and we saw various coins throughout time also the lobby was like really really nice it did look like a modern-day like stock trading exchange the the way it was decorated with different gods around it and the rectangular shape really like that as well because we're super interactive though probably one of the highlights was being able to lift a gold bar that was behind Decay so it was a good workout oh there you go bab nice I was worried the gold bar was 13 kilos so make sure you get your exercise in before you come to this Museum this is something not everyone's going going be able to do so if you don't plan ahead you're going to miss out but if you do plan ahead make sure that you visit this because it's a free tour it's a lot of fun it lasts about an hour and you'll learn a whole bunch about the history of Romania the parliament of Bucharest or the Palace of parliament is the second biggest Administrative Building in the entire world next to the Pentagon now I didn't know the Pentagon was that big I've never been there or seen it in real life but this building is massive I really don't see how any other building could be any bigger than that now this is the heaviest building on the planet now that makes sense to me because all around town you can see this thing it is absolutely enormous I can't even compare it to anything else I mean it makes sense that it's absolutely the the heaviest the Church of the stopulos monastery was built in 1724 which makes it older the United States of America where we're from this seems to be one of the main things to see when you're in the downtown area because it's so historical you could even go inside if you want to and check out to see how it's decorated inside of the church and Monastery as [Music] well once you go in you can really see how old this building is because it's all Stone and then they painted the interior onto the stone and as you if you look up close and kind of feel the stone you see all the paintings kind of chipping away and a lot of the faces on the apostles and the different pictures that are in the church are like faded away and then the detailing that's on the doorway as you come in is really really nice it's wooden and then just all the details you could tell it was like handcarved and then not just the church but like as you pass the church there's like a little open area kind of the center area I think for the rest of the monastery and this very tranquil as well and they have the candle area as well but yeah you can definitely tell the the age of this church when you step inside we stumbled upon this like outdoor popup weekend market and I think I see a Tampa Bay football jersey I know they have what is it Tempa in Russel but let's see what this Tampa Bay jersey is about if it actually is yeah it is a px Jersey is that a Warren Sap Jersey Z Super Bowl champion Hall of Famer nice it's 120 Le so what is that like it 30 something like that yeah look at that is this your shop yeah we're from Tampa and we were walking I'm like I think that's ay how did you get that um in the second right the Romanian import from USA okay okay we're like how did this end up here that's pretty cool yeah but other sports too that's really cool nice uh I love the stuff from is the best yeah yeah very cool yeah very cool thanks yeah I was like oh that's awesome okay keep going we got other place to sleep but this is pretty fun we are currently walking in the road well actually the bike lane we should probably be walking over here but I overheard someone say that on the weekends these roads become pedestrian streets so no cars are allowed to go through that's really cool and there's a wedding going on right here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all [Music] [Music] oh the memorial of rebirth statue is a tall marble Monument here almost in the center of the city it represents all those who lost their lives in the revolution of 1989 one description I read online is that the white statue represents the purity of the people piercing through the tumor or the cage that is communism there's also plaques along the side to show the names of those who lost their life during the revolution one of the things I like about being in Romania is their language so because they are a Latin based language I can pick up on some of the words because my second language is Spanish which is also Latin based and so with context clues I can figure out some of the words that you know I see around me or on menus uh so that's been nice to navigate even though you know we try and learn some of the basics like you know thank you and please and uh just a few of the basics and the locals are appreciative but it's good when we can try and figure out what's going on unlike when we were in Bulgaria and they have the surc alphabet that can't do at all we're in India Hindi and those fun looking letters can't can't do that at all either but in countries like this I appreciate it we're on a day date but I had to pop in and tell you guys about this bowling experience that we're having right so we've been wanting to go bowling for a while but here in Romania I don't know what it's like in other countries but it's half or quarter of the price to go during the day during the week and we have no fixed schedule we can kind of work whenever we want to so we decided to pop in it's a Wednesday morning and we have 1 hour of bowling for only $10 and not just that but it includes socks so you don't have to rent socks are like two or three bucks we have our own socks but it also includes the shoes and the 1hour of bowling all those things would be separate and even just the bowling itself would be like twice or three times the amount of money it's $10 per Lane so I imagine if there's two or four people it's also included this is incredible all right we're going to go bowling now but we just had to check it with you guys this is awesome nice you got one I thought I was going to get a gter roll I got more than two thank you so much for watching this video this oh wait no don't we say it together this is W look at the pit thank you so much for watching this video This is why can't we do this this is witty travels what could possibly penix we haven't closed in a long time

Channel: WITY TRAVELS

Views: 30,540

Keywords: WITY TRAVELS, România, Romania, Bear Romania, Bucharest Romania, Bucharest Romania 2023, WITY LIFE, Romania First Impressions, Romania Travel, Romania Travel 2023, Castle Romania, Romania Travel Vlog, Americans in Romania, Bucharest FIRST IMPRESSIONS, Bucharest Travel Vlog, Romania Travel Vlog 2023

Id: rfMdJw6y1To

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023