Orthodox Easter and Spring Break with Kids in Bucharest 2027

Each spring the Village Museum, an open-air park of village houses, fills its alleys with folk craftspeople for Florii, the Orthodox Palm Sunday. Kids can watch eggs being painted by hand and Lazarus pies being made, browse the craft stalls, and catch Romanian folk ensembles on the Dumitra stage.

It works best as a come-and-go visit: wander at your own pace and stop wherever something catches a kid's eye.

Hanami is the Japanese custom of gathering under the cherry blossoms. The Embassy of Japan marks it each year with a day in the Japanese Garden of Herăstrău Park, mixing Japanese crafts and culture with the trees in bloom.

It suits curious kids who like making things with their hands and can enjoy quieter moments between the busier stations.

An open-air village on the shore of Lake Herăstrău, made of 62 farmsteads moved here from regions across Romania: 40 houses, three churches and 15 craft workshops and technical installations, from the 17th to the early 20th century.

Kids walk 9 hectares of lanes, look into furnished peasant homes and compare gates and roofs between regions. The museum also hosts a folk craftsmen's fair and a winter customs festival.

An ethnographic museum in a Neo-Romanian building, holding more than 100,000 objects of village life: folk costumes, textiles and rugs, painted icons and pottery. The star is a whole peasant house from Gorj County rebuilt indoors, with a platform for peering into its attic.

A basement room keeps a wry display of Communist-era leftovers, and a wooden church brought from Bejan, in Hunedoara, stands in the inner courtyard.

A family-run farm park built for kids on more than 4 hectares beside a working dairy farm. Kids can pet and feed goats, ponies, sheep, donkeys, llamas, ostriches and guinea pigs, and staff help them hold the smaller animals.

Two big trampolines (100 and 80 square meters) and a zip line are free to use, and fresh milk from the dairy's dispenser is sold on the way out.

Bucharest Zoo, Grădina Zoologică Băneasa to locals, covers about 6 hectares in Băneasa. It keeps more than 150 species of mammals, birds and reptiles, and the tigers, lions, bears and monkeys draw the biggest crowds.

The zoo opened in 1955 and takes part in international conservation programs for endangered species such as the gray wolf.

Mogoșoaia Palace was built in 1702 by Constantin Brâncoveanu, in the Brâncovenesc style. Inside are the Museum of Court Tradition, a comparative art collection of about 300 pieces, plus around ten temporary shows a year in the ground-floor rooms and the old palace kitchen.

Outside the courtyard, an English-style park from 1921-1922 holds gardens, the 1688 Saint George church and the Bibescu greenhouses, now a children's art workshop.

Lake Snagov stretches 16 km through what is left of the old Vlăsia forests, with oak, lime and ash woods along the shore.

A footbridge leads to the island monastery, first recorded in 1408, whose 16th-century church holds a tombstone attributed to Vlad the Impaler (a 1933 dig found no remains). On the water there are rowboats, pedal boats, motorboats and small passenger boats.

Comana Natural Park covers about 25,000 hectares of forest, meadows, lakes and the Neajlov River with its small delta, the second-largest wetland area in Romania after the Danube Delta.

Kids can paddle kayaks and take boats along the river, cycle and walk the trails, and look for some of the 157 bird species recorded here. An adventure park adds zip lines and suspended rope courses.

The treetop park at Casa Comana has nine rope courses in three levels, from low routes for preschoolers to high ones for teens and adults. The big draws are a cascade of 10 ziplines through the trees, a 130 m zipline across the lake, and the 300 m Dragon zipline that launches from the Sun Tower, 20 m above the water.

Edenland Park is a forest adventure park in Balotești, about 20 minutes' drive from Bucharest. Its 16 treetop rope courses range from easy to hard, and a continuous safety line means climbers never unclip mid-route.

Away from the ropes there is Zooland, a walk past llamas, camels, ostriches and deer, plus a children's playground, mini golf, archery, bikes, a climbing wall and pony rides.

Herăstrău Park covers about 200 hectares around a 74-hectare lake, where pontoons rent rowing boats and hydrobikes and kayakers paddle out. Away from the water there are children's playgrounds, an adventure park with trails, skate areas, bike rental and tennis courts.

The Japanese Garden and Rose Island are quieter corners, and the open-air Village Museum, with traditional houses from across Romania, sits inside the park.

Tineretului Park is a large green space just south of Piața Unirii, laid out between 1965 and 1974 around the 13-hectare Lacul Tineretului. There is a dock with rowing boats, big play areas for kids, and lawns and benches for a slow afternoon.

The National Children's Palace sits at the park's east end, and the Sala Polivalentă arena stands inside the grounds.

Orășelul Copiilor is a 15-hectare park beside Tineretului Park that mixes paid rides with free play. The rides include a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, the Fast Tower, Crazy Dance and carousels, plus floating swan boats on the lake in the warm months.

Around them sit playgrounds with slides, sports courts, decorative fountains, cafés and shaded paths.

The University of Bucharest's botanical garden covers 18 hectares of themed outdoor gardens: a rose garden, an Italian garden, a hill of conifers, and beds of Mediterranean and medicinal plants.

The exhibition greenhouses hold a tall palm house, cacti, orchids, a vanilla vine and a pool of tropical water lilies. A botanical museum sits on the grounds, and a café faces a wide lawn beside grassy hills made for exploring.

Peleș is the castle King Carol I built in the Carpathian Mountains near Sinaia between 1873 and 1914, and the first castle in the world fully powered by its own electricity.

The visit covers the ground and first floors: rooms styled Florentine, Turkish and Moorish, and two armories holding part of a 4,000-piece collection, from chainmail and scimitars to a full suit of armor for a horse and rider.