Bucharest With Kids
A palace with 1,100 rooms that a dictator built and never lived in, an old town of beer halls and a bookshop on five floors, parks with lakes and rowboats, and a castle in the mountains two hours away by train. Bucharest is big, cheap and far more fun with kids than its reputation.
Nicole Damiano, ASTA Verified Travel Advisor with FG Luxury Travel
Is Bucharest good for kids?
Yes. The Palace of the Parliament tour, the carousel bookshop, the Village Museum with hundreds of real houses, parks with rowboats and big playgrounds, a natural history museum with dinosaurs and a huge indoor water park. Prices are low and Uber makes it easy.
How many days do you need in Bucharest?
Three nights for the palace, the Old Town and the Village Museum. Four if you add Sinaia and Peleș Castle or a day at Therme.
Does Romania use the euro?
No. Romania uses the leu. Cards work almost everywhere, but carry a little cash for street food, markets and small museums.
How do you get from Bucharest to Peleș Castle?
By train from Gara de Nord to Sinaia in about two hours, then a 20 minute walk up through the park and the monastery to the castle. By car it is about two hours on the main road north. The castle is closed on Mondays.
When is the best time to visit Bucharest?
May, June and September for the parks and the terraces. July and August are hot but the lakes and Therme help. December for the Christmas market under the palace.
The Capital That Surprises People
Bucharest was called little Paris a hundred years ago, for the boulevards, the Arc de Triomphe copy and the belle époque mansions, and then Ceaușescu knocked down a fifth of the center to build the Palace of the Parliament, the second biggest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon. The city today is both at once: a lively old town of restaurants and a glass bookshop, wide parks with lakes, and that palace sitting over it all. It is cheap, the kids eat pretzels from street windows, and the train to the mountains takes two hours.
Three nights covers the Palace, the Old Town, the Village Museum and the big parks, with a fourth for Sinaia and Peleș Castle or a day at Therme.
Getting Around
On foot between the Old Town, Revolution Square and the Parliament, which sit within 20 minutes of each other. Uber and Bolt are inexpensive and the simplest way to the parks and the museums with kids. The metro is clean and quick for Herăstrău and the Village Museum. The airport train runs to Gara de Nord.
Neighborhoods worth basing in
The Old Town, Lipscani
The restored center of cobbled streets, beer halls, churches and the carousel bookshop, with the Parliament a 20 minute walk and Revolution Square 15. Loud on weekend nights, lively and easy by day. Apartments and small hotels, the base for a first visit if you pick a quiet street.
Calea Victoriei and Revolution Square
The grand boulevard of the old city, with the Athenaeum concert hall, the old royal palace and the big hotels along it, Cișmigiu Gardens five minutes west and the Old Town five minutes south. The calmer, prettier base for families.
Herăstrău and the north
The leafy embassy quarter around the big lake park, with the Village Museum, the Arc de Triomphe and the playgrounds on the doorstep and the center 15 minutes away by metro. Apartments with space, good for a longer stay.
Athénée Palace
The 1914 grand hotel on Revolution Square, now run by InterContinental, with the Athenaeum across the street, big rooms and a spa. The hotel the old spy stories were set in, and the splurge that still costs less than a chain in Vienna.
Grand Hotel Bucharest
The tall hotel on University Square between the Old Town and Calea Victoriei, with big rooms, views across the whole city and everything central on foot. The practical middle choice for a family.
Hotel Cișmigiu
A restored 1912 building on the edge of Cișmigiu Gardens, with apartment style rooms that have kitchenettes, the park playground across the road and the Old Town 10 minutes away. Good value and space for a family of five.
The Three I Build Every Bucharest Trip Around
The Palace of the Parliament
Ceaușescu’s palace has 1,100 rooms, 3,000 chandeliers and marble halls the size of football fields, and the standard tour walks through a dozen of them in an hour. Kids stop talking when they see the first ballroom. Bring passports for everyone, book the English tour ahead and skip the basement add on with young kids. The building sits at the end of a boulevard built a little wider than the Champs Élysées on purpose, which the kids will enjoy pointing out.
The Old Town and the carousel bookshop
The Lipscani streets are the medieval merchant quarter restored, with the Stavropoleos church and its carved stone courtyard, the 1808 Manuc’s Inn around a wooden balconied yard, and the Macca Vilacrosse arcade under yellow glass. Cărturești Carusel is the bookshop built like a white carousel over five floors with a cafe on top, and kids go up and down it for an hour. Caru’ cu Bere, the 1879 beer hall with painted ceilings, does a family lunch of sarmale and mici under the stained glass.
The Village Museum and the parks
On the lake in Herăstrău park, the Village Museum is hundreds of real houses, barns, windmills and wooden churches moved from every region of Romania and rebuilt under the trees, with the furniture still inside. Kids run from a thatched hut to a painted Transylvanian farmhouse and count the steps up to the church. The park around it has rowboats and bike paths. Across town, Cișmigiu Gardens is the small central park with a lake and playgrounds, and Tineretului has some of the biggest playgrounds in the city.
Family Time, Built In: Bucharest With Kids
Bucharest with kids is the biggest building they have ever seen, a bookshop shaped like a carousel, a village of real houses in a park, pretzels from a window, dinosaurs, and a water park with palm trees.
Going up and down the Cărturești Carusel bookshop
The Village Museum houses
The Grigore Antipa natural history museum
A day at Therme water park
PARK & DOWNTIME PICK
The Grigore Antipa Museum by the Arc de Triomphe is the natural history museum with the dinosaur skeletons and the dioramas, and it fills a rainy morning. Therme Bucharest, 20 minutes north by the airport, is a huge glass dome of warm pools, water slides, palm trees and a family area, and it is where locals go in winter. The Orășelul Copiilor children’s park inside Tineretului has rides and playgrounds, and Cișmigiu has rowboats on the lake in the center.
Five Things To Eat In Bucharest
Mici with mustard
Covrigi from the window
Papanași and cozonac
Ice cream in the Old Town
Coffee on Calea VictorieiNicole’s Perspective
The capital I put in front of Transylvania
Most families plan Romania for the castles and the mountains, and Bucharest is where the flight comes in. I give it three nights rather than one, because the Parliament tour, the Village Museum and the Old Town are three real days, and the train to Sinaia and Brașov leaves from here anyway.
Prices are low, Uber works, and the kids eat mici and pretzels for pocket money. I book the Parliament tour in advance, Therme for the one bad weather day, and the morning train north with the castle tickets for Peleș already in hand. December here, with the Christmas market on Constitution Square under the palace, is one of the bigger surprises I plan.
The Day Trip: Sinaia and Peleș Castle
Two hours north by train from Gara de Nord, Sinaia is a mountain resort in the Carpathians and Peleș is the castle King Carol I built there in the 1870s, with turrets, carved wood, stained glass and 160 rooms that look like a fairy tale set. It was one of the first castles in Europe with electricity and an elevator, which the kids find more interesting than the armor. Walk up through the forest from the station past the monastery, tour the castle, then take the gondola up the Bucegi mountains if the weather is clear. Peleș is closed on Mondays, so plan the day around that. A car makes it easy to add Brașov and Bran Castle for a two day loop.
Things I Would Tell A Friend Before They Booked
How Many Days
Three nights covers the palace, the Old Town and the Village Museum. Four adds Sinaia or Therme.
The Palace of the Parliament and the Old Town on day one, the Village Museum and Herăstrău on day two, the Antipa museum and Cișmigiu on day three.
Add the train to Sinaia for Peleș Castle and the gondola, or a day at Therme if the weather turns.
Three nights in Bucharest, the train to Brașov for three nights with Bran Castle and the bear sanctuary, then two in Sighișoara or Sibiu. Ten days, one country, and the kids come home talking about castles.
Bucharest With Kids, Answered
Is Bucharest good for kids?
Yes. The Palace of the Parliament tour, the carousel bookshop, the Village Museum with hundreds of real houses, parks with rowboats and big playgrounds, a natural history museum with dinosaurs and a huge indoor water park. Prices are low and Uber makes it easy.
How many days do you need in Bucharest?
Three nights for the palace, the Old Town and the Village Museum. Four if you add Sinaia and Peleș Castle or a day at Therme.
Does Romania use the euro?
No. Romania uses the leu. Cards work almost everywhere, but carry a little cash for street food, markets and small museums.
How do you get from Bucharest to Peleș Castle?
By train from Gara de Nord to Sinaia in about two hours, then a 20 minute walk up through the park and the monastery to the castle. By car it is about two hours on the main road north. The castle is closed on Mondays.
When is the best time to visit Bucharest?
May, June and September for the parks and the terraces. July and August are hot but the lakes and Therme help. December for the Christmas market under the palace.
Ready To Put Bucharest On The Calendar
Send me your dates and your kids’ ages and I will set Bucharest into your Romania route, book the Parliament tour and Peleș, and find the hotel by the park.
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