You can thank yours truly via the comments for today's highlights, 7 Things You Might Not Know About Romania. And to think a few months ago I couldn't even find Romania on a world map. It's wonderful what travel does for one's view of the world.
Would you believe the very first European castle to have electricity was Romania's Peles Castle? Sure you would given today's post is all about Romania! I saw the electricity with my own eyes; not in 1883 when Romania's King Carol I stepped into the 20th century with his forward thinking (it helped he had his own plant for producing the electricity). I was there a few days ago. Seems King Carol I went for broke and also had central heating and vacuuming installed in his summer home in Sinaia in Romania's Carpathian Mountains.
Very enlightening visit!
My last encounter with a chamois was while washing the car. Just saying.
The People's Palace, as it came to be called following the revolution and subsequent execution of Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day, 1989, is 12 stories tall with an undisclosed number of underground levels (at least 8) in varying states of completion. Estimates of the Romanian materials used to construct the 1,100 rooms totaling 3.9 million square feet include 1 million cubic meters of Transylvanian marble, 3,500 metric tonnes of crystal for the 480 chandeliers and 1,409 lights and mirrors created , 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, 900,000 cubic meters of wood and 200,000 meters of woven carpets.
Isn't socialism wonderful!
Wish I had a good set of pipes!
And you can take information to the bank.
The moustached and wide-eyed rock sculpture was commissioned by wealthy Romanian businessman Iosif Constantin Dragan in 1994 (Iosif purchased the mountain before commissioning his sculpture) and took 10 years to complete.
Talk about a heart of stone!