Bucaresti - observations and our weekend

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.5acgzy7o&x=0&h=1&y=bxkhrz

So we've been in Bucaresti (how the locals say Bucharest) for about a week now and I've made a couple of observations of the area:

1 - Taxi drivers are apparently crazy EVERYWHERE!! Every single city I've been to so far has taxi drivers that drive crazy! You're almost scared for your life every time you get into one. Unfortunately - taxi is our mode of transportation here so we take at least 4 taxis a day (to and from work and then for dinner). At least once a day we're ALMOST in some type of accident where the taxi driver ends up cursing out the other driver in Romanian....

2 - Romanian people are some of the nicest and most accomodating people I've met outside of the States. In Amsterdam I realized that "the customer is NOT always right" and usually they don't care if you want to tailor your meal or if you request something special. Here, our hotel staff has been extremely polite and the service is great...that's pretty much been my experience everywhere here. Dinners don't take 3 hours like in Amsterdam - only the expected 1 hour here. And our office staff in the Romanian office is ALWAYS polite, helpful and cheerful. It's very refreshing.

3 - However...Romanians also have the most disgusting smoking habit I've seen (not sure if there's a correlation there). Probably about 85% of the people I've seen around have a cigarette in their mouth. Even the taxi drivers smoke while they drive customers around. If you see a smoker - there's ALWAYS a cigarette in his/her mouth...while eating, while driving, while working, etc. It's definitely impossible to go anywhere without coming back wreaking of smoke! Sooo nasty :-(.

OK - so those are a few observations I've made this week...on to this weekends events:

Friday night (6.15.07)

So those of you I've talked to this week know that I've had a little bit of a stressful week. My job's still better than my previous one, but I've gotten a lot more responsibility this time and still don't know much about the company... which adds to the pressure of getting everything done in a few weeks while we're here.

Basically, by Friday - I was in desparate need to shed "work Ambika" and let "fun Ambika" come out and play...

We left work a little early and I hit the gym as usual to work it out and relieve some stress/feel better. Afterwards, I met up with my co-workers Rafael and Sonia (Sonia is our IT Auditor joining us for 2 weeks) for dinner. We were all pretty hungry so we decided on an early dinner tonight. The Marriott has a bunch of great restaurants inside of it so we headed that way to get some grub. Side note - we were supposed to stay at the Marriott but due to some issue with the rates, we would have had to move hotels in the middle of the week. As a result, we decided to stay at the Hilton the whole time. Now after seeing the Marriott - we shoulda stayed there!! it's a really beautiful hotel that's so massive it has over 6 restaurants plus countless shopping stores and even a pharmacy! oh well...live and learn.

We decided on Cupola - one of the nicer, more expensive restaurants in the hotel that was recommended by both our fellow co-workers that were here the weekend before as well as our PwC translater, Diana, that's been extremely helpful in recommending places to eat and things to do while we're here. Well, they were right about recommending it. Since we had gotten there around 7:30, we were the only ones in the restaurant for a while...kinda nice. Every part of the meal was fantastic! from the bread to my caesar salad and grilled chicken with sauteed veggies. yummm! Well, we were done around 9:30 or so and wanted to head to a bar for a couple drinks and to check out the local scene since Bucaresti isn't much of a "tourist" city. Apparently bars/clubs are spread out throughout the city, so there isn't just one area to go to and hang out for the night. I asked the Marriott concierge where he recommended for us to go. For some reason Rafael wanted to hit up an Irish Pub (in Romania? not sure why)...so there were 2 options. The concierge put us in a cab and sent us on our way to the Dubliner. kinda dive-y but nice cause it was definitely a local pub. of course - everyone there was smoking, so i'm sure my lungs are nice and black by now - yuck! we chilled and talked/joked around for a while and did some people watching, but by midnight we all were ready to call it a night. Sonia isn't much of a party-girl and I think we all just wanted our beds and to sleep in on Saturday.

(at the Dubliner)

Saturday - 6.16.07:

We met up around 11am (slept in until 9am today - woohoo!) to head over to the Parliament and the Village Museum for our day's excursions. This weekend is more chill because 1 - there isn't a whole lot of stuff to see and 2 - Greece is gonna be crazy and I'm gonna get very little sleep next weekend. So the Parliament is the 4th largest building (usable space) in the world. It's a huge square and is the #1 largest building in terms of mass (The heaviest building in the world is made of 1 million m³ (35.3 million cu ft) of marble from Transylvania and 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze. The building also features 3,500 metric tons of crystal glass and 900,000 m³ (31.7 million cu ft) of wood. It measures 270 m by 240 m (885 ft by 787 ft), 86 m (282 ft) high, and extends 92 m (300 ft) below ground.) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament

It was truly an amazing building!! Really extravagent and beautiful on the inside even though you can't really tell from the outside. It's definitely more of a palace than a government building.

- this was on the floor of the Parliament and is a "map" of the bldg

oh - another side note.....i don't know what the deal is with us and taxis - but here's a funny story. so in the morning we went to catch a cab outside of the hotel. Rafael sees a taxi driver that we'd used before so he goes straight for the guy cause he liked him. Sonia and I weren't really sure what he was doing cause there were 3 other taxi's right in front of the building. but whatever. so the guy takes us to the Parliament, but on the way over there he's speaking to Rafael in broken English/Romanian (which apparently is fairly close to Spanish since they both have Latin backgrounds). So him and Rafael and talking and the guy is suggesting that we go to the Village Museum later that day after the Parliament. Rafael informed him that we were planning to do that afterwards so the taxi driver says he'll wait for us at the Parliament since it's only 1 hour and then take us to the Museum after. Now - at this point Rafael looks and me and I said "you know I'm gonna say NO"...I definitely didn't like the sound of that, but the guy just kept talking to Rafael. So he drops us off and Rafael thought that it would be too difficult for us to catch a taxi from the Parliament and tells the guy to wait for us. I'm really unhappy about this, but Rafael's gonna pay the guy so it's up to him. After our tour, the driver takes us to the Village Museum and offers to wait again. This time, Rafael said "no" and the guy wanted 100 RON for his time/driving. Rafael wasn't expecting to pay more than 60 (which is about 30 USD), so they had to bargain and argue about the price. Obviously - I knew that was going to happen, but not my problem!

OK - so we get to the Village Museum and Sonia wanted some lunch since she doesn't eat breakfast. Rafael and I weren't hungry but I offered to stop somewhere first and get something for her to eat. I know i wouldn't have been able to enjoy anything if I was hungry. But we followed Rafael inside since he had already gotten his ticket (are you noticing a pattern here?) and just got a soda each to hold us over and deal w/the heat...it was HOT today!

- some cute kids at the Village Museum

We walked around for a bit...basically this "museum" is an outdoor park-like atmosphere that has models of old villages depending on which region you're in: Transylvania, Moldova, etc. It just shows the differences between regions back in the day and how their daily life was. It was really cute but between the heat and the fact that we were all ready for some food, we didn't stay too long.

There weren't too many taxis around the area so we walked a little and caught one off the street. We had gotten this "in your pocket" book on Bucharest so based on the list of restaurants listed in there, Sonia wanted to check out this "Tex Mex" place called Amigos. We showed the taxi driver the street address and info and turns out he was a newby and didn't really know his way around town yet. He had to call his boss twice and even pulled over to ask a fellow taxi driver how to get there. Kind of a mess - and I think we drove all around town to go somewhere that was maybe 10-15 min. away from where we were. Luckily we don't have to pay for taxis and they're pretty cheap - but another adventure...oh wait! not done w/the adventure yet. So we finally get to Amigos and it's around 3pm. This book said that the restaurant was open from noon to 1am, but failed to mention hours during the day that they'd be closed. At 3pm when we get there, the sign on the door says it'll open at 5pm. soooo - we ask the taxi driver to just take us back to the hilton (we were all a little frustrated by then). He said "no"....haha - the taxi driver doesn't speak English and I'm not exactly sure what the confustion was, but he called on some guy who had just parked his car across the street to try to translate for us. Just our luck, but the guy happened to be one of the owners/General Manager of Amigos! When he realized we had gone there for lunch, he said "don't worry - we won't let you leave hungry...c'mon in and we'll fix you something". His English was great and he was soo nice to us. He was having a staff meeting, but opened the restaurant for us and had a waitress serve us, etc. The food wasn't too bad either. Tasted like something you'd get in the States. Turns out the guy lived in the States for 30 years (LA, Vegas, and Ft. Lauderdale) and then moved back to Bucharest about 10 years ago. Really great guy - Viorel Mihailescu. If anyone's ever in Bucharest, you should check it out. It's on of 2 "tex mex" places in the city and i've heard the other one isn't that great. He just opened the restaurant a few months ago and mainly gets his business from Ex-Pats and a few tourists/visitors. So he told us that he has a DJ at night and asked that we stop by later. As they were soo great about serving us when they were technically closed, I thought it only right to go back and support him.

- we all needed a good Corona after our crazy day of Taxis.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel for some R&R and "quiet time" as I like to call it. Basically - I need some space from my coworkers! I mean, there's only so much time you can spend w/people. We agreed to meet for dinner around 9:30pm...when we all met up and walked around the area to see what's close, we realized that none of us were hungry! we'd eaten such a late lunch that it hadn't even digested by dinner time. We found a nearby restaurant of locals and ended up just ordering dessert for our meal :-). I had this crepe w/chocolate (nutella) and vanilla ice cream - yum!!! Rafael had some ice cream and Sonia had some donut-type thing. we were all pretty satisfied and then decided to hit up Amigos to see our new friend and have a few drinks. Apparently there was a pretty big party there from the American Embassy (40-50 ppl) and some of them hung around afterwards. The margaritas were yum! we hung out for a while and chatted up w/the owner and one of the managers. they were both really nice and gave us their card if we ever had problems with anything or needed anything. The owner, Viorel, also told us a few places to check out but Rafael wanted to check out this Coyote Cafe that sounded like it was a Live Band place. When we got there it was pretty lame and was just disgustingly filled with smoke. At that point, I just couldn't take it anymore!! I had to leave and I didn't even want to go anywhere else. I was pretty disappointed because Viorel told us about this club called Planters that was supposed to be pretty good and I just didn't want to be around all the smoke anymore so we went back to the hotel.

All this smoke is really getting to me. I woke up Sunday morning and felt like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes - it was disgusting. Unfortunately, the only way to get around it is if just stay in my hotel room for the next 2 weeks - which definitely isn't going to happen!

Sunday - 6.17.07

Today was kinda "do your own thing day". Sonia and I felt like watching a movie so we went to the local Bucaresti Mall and did a little shopping (turned out to be window shopping cause everything was so expensive!) and then watched Fantastic Four. Not great, but not bad since I had low expectations. That was pretty much my day today...unfortunately I have to do some work today, so nothing exciting. Rafael has a late night ahead of him as he's heading to a local sports bar to watch 2 football (soccer) games starting at 10pm.

Check out the link above for my Bucharest pics. I only posted a couple on this site. Next weekend - Greece!

Istanbul - 6.8 thru 6.10.07

(first - here's a link to my pictures until I'm able to post a few on the blog)
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.3ebmbvyc&x=0&h=1&y=2rifqy

Friday Night -
So Rafael and I went to Reina and enjoyed a great dinner on the patio off of the Basphora River. The scene - probably about 60% wealthy locals (fairly young) and business people. Interesting people-watching for sure. The girls were gorgeous and the guys, well...not so much, but I'm sure they had plenty of money to keep the girls entertained. Somehow dinner lasted from 8:30 to midnight...typical slow service, but we also ordered a few courses and obviously dessert! The restaurant was actually 6 different restaurants all connected with bars in each of them and a main bar on the ground level in the middle. Rafael hung out for a bit at the bar after dinner to check out the scene as the restaurant(s) turn into a club/lounge at night. Still good people watching, but the music wasn't really "dance-able" (even though I did like it) and after a 3 1/2 hour dinner with my co-worker, I didn't really have much else to talk about at the time.
I was up for checking out some other "hot spots" in the area - Ortakoy, but Rafael was tired so we headed back to the hotel to get some rest for Saturday.

Saturday - 6.9.07
Today we couldn’t get up at 8am as planned, but Rafael finally got up at 9 and woke me up at 9:30 to get ready. We knew we had a full day ahead of us so it wasn’t a big deal that we slept in a little…I knew that I’d need all the energy I could get. We grabbed some breakfast in the hotel since it came with the room but came to realize that it was pretty gross. Not even good fruit or croissants. There were canned peaches and runny eggs, sausages and some weird cheese. I had some fruit and a bowl of cereal that was half-way decent. So anyways, after breakfast we headed out to explore the city according to Izzet’s itinerary that he prepared for us.

1st stop – the Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii).
This was still a working mosque and is referred to as “Blue” because of the Blue tiles and Blue granite used. It looks huge and is very beautiful from the outside but extremely simple on the inside. Since the mosque was still in use, we had to take off our shoes and cover our legs and head before entering. It was a fairly quick visit as there wasn’t much to see.

2nd stop – Aya Sophia
…this mosque-turned-museum across the street was actually built twice since the original had burned down. From the outside it’s also beautiful but doesn’t look quite as large as the Blue Mosque. From the inside it appears MUCH bigger than it’s friend across the way. We spent a good hour here as there was way more to see. This mosque was more elaborate and was actually originally a church from the Byzantine Era. You could see some remnants of Christian mosaics on the walls. The Sultan who took over this “church” and turned it into a mosque also simplified the inside. The walls were painted into much simpler shapes and designs. A photographer had apparently spent many years taking photographs in the area and his pictures of the mosque were displayed. Truly beautiful stuff. You couldn’t even tell that they were just photographs because of the clarity of the pictures. They looked almost like paintings.

3rd stop – Topkapi Palace (Topkapi Sarayi)We walked through an amazingly huge and beautiful garden before even reaching the palace itself. On our way into the palace, Rafael and I got stopped by some guy and his wife (I'm assuming) who asked us if we were American. As usual, Rafael replies that he's Mexican (it's true - not a US Citizen) but I called him out on wearing a FL Gators polo - booo Gators! So basically this guy asked us if we were on vacation here etc. and if we were planning to buy any Turkish Rugs...obviously we said no and turns out that they were there buying some rugs for importing into the States to sell. Sooo random! The palace had hundreds of rooms and was extremely spread out. Most of the rooms were closed but areas such as the Audience Room (where the Sultan met with advisors), the kitchens, and treasury rooms were open for us to view. Several rooms mainly held items on display such as blue and white porcelain bowls and plates, brass silverware, teapots, and decorative items, prayer rugs and Turkish carpets and my favorite – the jewelry. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the Treasury room, which held the jewelry and jewel-studded thrones, armoire, and various other items. The bling was out of control! The least piece was this enormous diamond – 86 carats I think that was surrounded by hundreds of other smaller diamonds. Can you imagine that this piece of jewelry was originally a RING! I don’t know who’s finger that thing would fit on, but eventually it was made into a brooch for the Sultan’s turban. After all our walking around – my stomach started talking to me…so obviously all I could think of was food. We headed out to an area nearby called Yerebatan Sarnici, which was actually on our itinerary for lunch. Izzet planned this pretty well.

We went to the Yerebatan Sarnici to grab lunch at this place called the Mosaic Cafe. It was really good but pretty pricey. We had some shrimp appetizer which was spiced with Turkish spices (yummm) and a lamb kabob...also pretty good. Anyways, I got some rest and off we go to the Grand Bazaar for shopping!

The Grand Bazaar was something else for sure...apparently it's the largest indoor marketplace in Europe and I wouldn't be surprised! Well, first - on our way to the Grand Bazaar we passed by a Sweets Shop and what do I see? Baklava!! my fave :-) They were also selling Turkish Delights so I picked up a box of each. So back on track to the Bazaar. This place was hall after hall of anything and everything you could possibly be looking for. I'm pretty sure it was geared more towards tourists as most stores were jewelry, silver, random bags (Frada, etc.), souvenir shirts, hookahs, tea sets, and the list goes on and on!! So we just walked around to see what all was there and we end up getting lost! After going through this aisle and that aisle we eventually found our way to a door leading to the outside. Unfortunately the door didn't lead to the way we came in from, but it led to this street of vendors that was completely packed with people!! We could hardly move and had no idea where we were going but we eventually found our way out to a main street and caught a cab back to our hotel.

By this time it's about 4:30ish and we were too tired to do anything else during the day and the weather was gorgeous so I hit up the pool for some reading and relaxation. Our dinner reservations for that night weren't until 10 because we figured that we could just go directly out afterwards...After the pool, it was nap time and then we got ready for our big night out.
Well it turned out to be pretty chill like the night before and not-so-big...turns out it's not as exciting to go out when you've been working with the same person for 2 months straight (and that person pretty much being the ONLY one). We went to the 360 Restaurant near our hotel and got a little lost along the way. It was walking distance, but the hotel was at the top of an Apartment Building that we couldn't find. The restaurant was on Istiklal St - another ridiculously crowded area, but this time ranging from teenagers and up. The street was blocked off so cars/cabs couldn't drive on it and was lined on both sides with stores like Diesel, United Colors of Benetton, Nike, Swatch, and sprinkled with random restaurants. This dinner was actually better than Reina's and cheaper too. I'd definitely recommend it!
There was a band playing some great Turkish music but again - not really dance-able so we walked the street to see what else was going on. Some good stuff but again nothing that really peaked our interest to stay out any later than 1am. Also surprisingly enough, the street was still ridiculously crowded that late at night...and back we went to the hotel for Sunday's excursion back to the Dolmabahce Palace.

Sunday - 6.10.07
Again, couldn't get up as early as I wanted but we were up by 9:30ish. Decided that we wanted something besides the nasty hotel breakfast so we walked to the nearby McD's for something. Apparently neither McD's nor Burger King sell breakfast food in Romania...must be an American thing. Next to the Burger King was a cute little Patisserie called Ozsut. We decided that surely they would have some type of breakfast food. Well Romanian breakfast is different from ours (boiled egg and vegetables), so Rafael decided on a cheesecake and lemon smoothie and I had a chocolate eclair and tea. Healthy breakfast right? oh well...so off we go to our palace. We walked there since it was close enough and I needed to burn some cals after that sugary breakfast. The palace had beautiful gardens and was gorgeous on the inside. They made us put this plastic booties over our shoes and we could only walk on specified carpet as the palace was hundreds of years old. The most amazing and distinct part of this palace was the numerous extravagant and beautiful chandeliers!! Truly exquisite. I believe there were over 300 rooms here and also a "Harem's" wing where the Sultan's women, wife and mother stayed. We also saw a pretty famous ballroom that has a 4.5 ton chandelier! It's apparently rented out to the government when high ranking officials (presidents, etc.) come visit and events are held.
So after about 2 hrs, we were finally done w/the palace and had to head back to the hotel to get our bags and peace out to the airport. This taxi driver wasn't as crazy as the first one, but took a long route so i almost fell asleep on the way....

So now I'm in Romania and back to work as usual. It's a little bit more stressful than my work in Amsterdam but it's all good...can't be a slacker for too long!
I'm out!! (pics to be uploaded soon)

Istanbul - Day 1

Friday – 6/8/07
First day in Istanbul: already an adventure

Well the flight was long as we had a 3 hr connection/layover in Frankfurt, but as am now an expert at sleeping anywhere, anytime – I slept through about 7 of the 10 hours we were en route.

We get to the Istanbul airport, get our bags – no problem and then headed to catch an airport/hotel shuttle. We were stopped by this guy standing right in front of the door and told us that we could get a shuttle at the rental car place. So we followed him and the guy there said it was gonna be 50 turkish liras for the both of us to get to our hotel which was in Taksim and the the shuttle would go directly to our hotel. We thought that was too expensive and were about to leave when he bargained down to 45 and then 40. again we thought it was too much so we left. As we walked back to the airport/hotel shuttle area, the guy a couple doors down stopped us and tried the same thing. He said 45 and then 40 when we told him the other guy offered us 40. again he said that the shuttle would go straight to our hotel instead of stopping everywhere on the way. So we agreed even though I was a little hesitant…Rafael had the money and was ok with it.

He quickly took our bags and told us to follow him. When we had to go inside the parking garage, Rafael and I looked at eachother knowing that we shoulda stuck to our guns and taken the airport/hotel shuttle. The guy crammed both of us in the front seat with the driver (mind you – Rafael is a BIG guy) and there were 4 other people in the back seat.
I KNEW we definitely didn’t get what we bargained for…we ended up hitting 2 other hotels (NOT near ours) and it took a good hour at least to get to our hotel. There was also a little adventure on the way from the last hotel to ours. We were going up this tiny one way street when another truck started heading down! Our guy honked and yelled but the other guy yelled and wouldn’t budge. I think for some reason, he had to park on the sidewalk near where we were and wanted US to reverse. By this time 2 other cars had gotten behind us and all 3 of us had to reverse. The other guy moved forward and BARELY left any room for us to go around him. The hotel time our guy is yelling and cursing at him and then spits outside his window towards the truck guy once we finally pass. He doesn’t speak any English, but he turns to Rafael (I’d moved to the back seat once the other passengers left) and goes “Turkish people”. Haha – we all laughed. Then he offered Rafael a cigarette (which was refused) and asked in Turkish if it was ok for him to smoke cause he was stressed. What were we gonna say, so he did. FINALLY, we end up at our hotel – the Hotel Marmara, which was a pretty nice looking hotel. Our room wasn’t ready yet, so Rafael grabbed something quick to eat at Burger King. Yes – burger king…not my first choice but we were starving and it was close. We got back to the hotel, our room was ready and when we get there we find out they gave us 1 double. Hahaha – obviously that was NOT gonna work. So we had to call and switch rooms. By the time all this was done, it was about 4:30pm. We headed to our first destination – Dolmabahce Palace. Not too far from our hotel so we walked it. Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize is that the Palace closed at 4pm and the café nearby was all that was open. So we walked around and took some pictures of the outside and decided to come back Sunday morning as it’s a 2 hour tour. Then we headed over to the Ortakoy area and checked out the restaurants (too bad we’d already eaten) and the little vendor shops where they sold random jewelry, sunglass and purse knock-offs, etc. Nothing too fancy or anything that peaked my interest, so we left to head back to the hotel shortly after checking out the area. The coolest part of Ortakoy was the view. It was right on the Basphora River and had a gorgeous view of the other side. I took a couple of pictures and will post them later.So that’s it for now. Tonight Rafael and I are heading to Reina – some fancy schmancy restaurant/club for dinner and then we’ll check out the night-life in the area. Should be interesting…will keep you posted later!