Bucharest, Romania 7 Day Itinerary

The second heaviest building on the planet sits in the middle of Bucharest, built by a dictator who never got to finish it, and the city has spent the decades since figuring out what to do with both the structure and the memory of him. Seven days lets you take that history seriously while still getting out to the Carpathians for the castles everyone actually came for.

Day 1: Arrival and City Center

From Henri Coandă airport, the Bus 100 express is the smart move over a taxi: it runs from arrivals every 15 minutes during the day, stops through Piata Victoriei and Piata Romana, and reaches central Bucharest in about 40 minutes for the price of a tap on a contactless card. A taxi covers the same 20 kilometers a bit faster if traffic cooperates but costs several times more, and unmetered airport touts are a genuine risk here, so only take a taxi from the official rank or book one through an app.

Base yourself somewhere central like Hotel Mercure Bucuresti City Center for easy walking access. Start with breakfast at Caru’ cu Bere in the Old Town, a beer hall dating to 1879 with a neo-Gothic interior of painted glass and carved wood that’s more ornate than the food itself, though the food is solid too. Walk into the Lipscani District, the old merchant quarter, now dense with bars, boutiques, and street art layered over 19th century facades. In the afternoon, book a guided tour of the Palatul Parlamentului, the Palace of Parliament, the second largest administrative building on earth after the Pentagon, commissioned by Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1980s and still only partially used today. Tours run about an hour, cost roughly 25 to 30 euros depending on operator, and require a passport or ID to enter, so don’t leave it at the hotel.

Day 2: Old Town and Museums

Spend the morning at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, a genuinely excellent, under-visited collection of folk art and rural life that regularly wins better reviews from locals than the bigger-name museums in the city. From there, walk to Curtea Veche, the ruins of the Old Princely Court where Vlad the Impaler once actually ruled from Bucharest in the 15th century, a detail worth knowing since most of the Dracula tourism in Romania, including a certain castle you’ll see later this week, has a much weaker historical connection to him than this modest ruin does.

Visit the Stavropoleos Church nearby, a small Orthodox church from 1724 with an interior of dense, hand-carved woodwork that rewards a slow look rather than a quick photo. For lunch, look for a bakery doing covrigi, the Romanian answer to a pretzel, sold from carts across the Old Town. In the afternoon, the Patriarchal Cathedral complex up the hill has a genuinely peaceful courtyard that empties out once the tour groups move on by mid-afternoon.

Day 3: Parks and Green Bucharest

Spend the morning at Herăstrău Park, now officially renamed King Michael I Park though locals still mostly call it by the old name, and visit the Village Museum inside it, an open-air collection of authentic wooden houses, churches, and windmills relocated from across Romania’s regions, essentially letting you see the whole country’s vernacular architecture in one walkable afternoon. It’s one of the best value museum visits in the city and consistently underrated by first-time visitors who skip straight to the Parliament building instead.

In the afternoon, visit Antim Monastery, a functioning Orthodox monastery built in the early 1700s with a genuinely quiet, still-in-use atmosphere that’s different from the museum-like feel of some of the bigger churches. Finish at Cișmigiu Gardens, Bucharest’s oldest public park, laid out in the 1840s around a small lake where you can rent a rowboat in summer for a few lei.

Day 4: Snagov Monastery

Take a half-day trip north to Snagov Monastery, sitting on a small island in Lake Snagov and reachable by a short boat crossing arranged through most Bucharest tour operators. The monastery is popularly said to hold Vlad the Impaler’s tomb, though when the grave was excavated in the 1930s it reportedly held no human remains at all, just animal bones, which historians take as reasonably strong evidence the burial story is folklore rather than fact. It’s still worth the trip for the setting alone, a genuinely peaceful, half-forgotten island church that gets a fraction of the crowds Bran Castle sees.

Back in Bucharest by early afternoon, spend the rest of the day at your own pace, then have dinner at Restaurant Senso for contemporary Romanian cooking with a rooftop view over the city, a good way to close out a lighter day before tomorrow’s longer trip.

Day 5: Bran Castle and Brasov

This is a full day, not a half one: Bran Castle sits roughly 170 kilometers from Bucharest and the drive alone runs about three hours each way, so book an organized tour rather than trying to do it as a casual add-on. Once there, know before you go that the castle’s connection to Vlad the Impaler is thin at best; most historians agree he may have passed near it but there’s no solid evidence he ever stayed there, and Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, never actually visited Romania or specifically described this building. Go for the striking hilltop architecture and the Transylvanian scenery, not for a genuine historical pilgrimage.

Most tours pair Bran with nearby Brașov, a beautifully preserved Saxon town with a fully intact medieval old town and the narrowest street in Southeastern Europe running through its center. Have a late lunch there before the long drive back, and don’t schedule anything else for the evening; this is a full twelve-hour day door to door.

Day 6: Peleș Castle and Sinaia

Head to Sinaia, about two hours north of Bucharest in the Carpathian foothills, to see Peleș Castle, a Neo-Renaissance palace built for King Carol I starting in 1873, widely considered the most architecturally spectacular castle in Romania and, unlike Bran, genuinely royal rather than loosely mythologized. Adult admission runs around 100 lei, roughly 20 euros, and photography inside costs extra, so budget for that if you want interior shots rather than just the exterior. Book ahead in summer, since tour groups can push wait times past an hour without a reservation.

In the afternoon, if time allows, stop briefly in Sinaia town itself, a former monastic retreat that gave the resort its name, before heading back to Bucharest. Skip trying to combine this with Târgoviște, the old Wallachian capital, in the same day; it sits in a different direction from Sinaia entirely and deserves its own half-day if you have the time, rather than being bolted onto an already long castle trip. Unwind back in the city with an evening at Hamam Bărcianu, a traditional Turkish-style bathhouse that’s a genuinely good way to loosen up after two demanding travel days back to back.

Day 7: Farewell

Use the morning to revisit whichever neighborhood surprised you most this week rather than chasing one more big attraction on limited time. If your flight is in the afternoon, most central hotels will hold your luggage after checkout at no extra charge, so ask before you leave your room key. Head to the airport via Bus 100 with a reasonable buffer, since Bucharest’s traffic can be unpredictable during weekday rush hour and you don’t want that to be the reason you’re sprinting through security.