Our trip to Romania started on a Thursday, as Friday was an upcoming holiday (aka a Bank holiday) in the UK. So we decided to make the most of our trip. We had to work on Thursday so we had to leave after work, the original plan was for us to work from home and then leave straight for the airport but as our projects are at critical points in their delivery we decided to come in to the office.

This proved to be a stressful day in the office, which we then had to rush home while having a conference call, all the while rushing to the airport. Of course, our flight was delayed, but at least we managed to wait in the lounge a bit and finish off some work. Eventually we left and the flight landed just after midnight. Luckily a guy was there to find us and escort us to the taxi, thankfully Izaskun organised this before.

 

The exit for the parking was absolute chaos, cars were driving against traffic, hooting, pushing in. It was moving along slowly until a car broke down while trying to insert their parking ticket. So it took ages but eventually we drove around the car, not really understanding what happened.

We arrived to the hotel where the staff seemed to be very indifferent, here is your key, your room is there. Izaskun struggled to understand them, as well as being exhausted didn’t understand at all what the guy said but in the end we managed. We checked into the room which smelled of sewage. Not a great start but we remained open minded so we started with trying to go to sleep.

 

We didn’t sleep well as the room was hot! We moved onto have our complimentary breakfast and then asked for a taxi to the airport to collect our car. We collected the car after a bit of walking around in circles trying to find the place and then speaking to a ‘charming’ lady who seemed to love her job. Eventually we sorted out the car papers in the stuffy airport, we had to be collected by a car to collect our car but eventually we got it and we started our drive through to Sinaia.

 

The road to Sinaia was not too eventful with the exception of driving through some pretty horrible industrial places that had a lot of litter all over the place and some very aggressive drivers racing and cutting others off. Overall we believe that Romania has probably the worst driving we have encountered in Europe, it seems that the road signs or markings are totally ignored by the local populace and there is absolutely no local police force that appears to enforce it, well at least from what we saw.

 

We eventually we arrived to what seemed like a small skiing village called Sinaia. Sinaia is the last town of the Wallachia province (which Bucharest belongs in too) before reaching the more mountains province of Transylvania. Technically it is not Transylvania but many people appear to think it is, this is forgivable as it does look very Transylvanian (which we saw more of in the later days).

We drove through the centre looking for signs on how to get to our hotel which was a bit further up the hill through some steep type of roads, which was made a bit worse with a few buses running around. The town is small but overall pretty nice with a cute and geneal welcoming nature to it. Arriving at the hotel we were very impressive with it, it was a geo-gothic building built in a very Germanic style, a theme we find moving across Transylvania.

 

Transylvania was originally settled by the Saxons (Germanic) who were invited by the King Géza II of Hungary in the 12^th century.

The remainder of the day we checked in to the hotel, explored the local area, had a dinner in the nearby restaurant and then passed out in which we managed to sleep heavily through as we had not slept well the day before.

The following day we woke up a bit later and decided to explore Sinaia, we were looking to go up the Bucegi mountains, which appears to be popular for skiing. As there was still snow around there were still people skiing. There is a cable car that goes all the way up which was useful if we decided if we were too tired to walk up or down. We saw the local area and walked to the town centre, mostly downhill which proved to be much harder on the way back. At least it was good exercise. In the town centre we asked the local tourist office about the conditions of the mountain, he was saying that is was a huge risk and there was a 5 out of 5 risk of avalanche. We also rattled on how many cubic metres of water there was and how much it would affect us. He also mentioned that the cable car was closed even thou the weather was sunny at the moment, apparently at the top it was windy and snowing.

Disappointed we decided we would walk around and see what we can without treating too much into the snow altitudes. We walked past the centre and saw that the cable car was operating and so we decided to ask whether they were running. They said they were and that there were no issues. Strange. We took the cable car up to the middle point called Cota 1400 (the number being the height in metres). The cart or gondola as it is called, was packed and seemed a bit outdated but obviously it does the job. On the Cota 1400 we got out and had to change to the other cable car which goes up all the way to the top which is 2000 metres high. After a brief wait we reached the top and were immediately hit by how cold and windy it was. It was sunny so I struggled to see anything, as the light reflected a lot off the snow. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the light. Izaskun thou didn’t have this issue (beauties of not having blue eyes). We hung around and walked up another 100 or 200 metres higher which again was colder and windier so we were pleased that we had our artic styled coats on which really worked well.

Fortunately, there were not too many people up there, although there were some especially some mountain rescue people which was reassuring as we would not like to be up there alone. After our strolling around we proceeded to go down, we saw a unlucky boy having to be carried off in a stretcher as he seemed to have had a ski accident and the only way out was via the cable car. Our trip down to Cota 1400 was uneventful but we were immediately happy and surprised by the better weather on 1400 which was still cold but nothing compared to the 2000 level.

So we then decided we wanted to walk down, and fortunately our hotel was kind of on the way. After some debate as to where the path started, and a brief detour walking in a circle to find the path we proceeded to walk down. We stuck to the main road initially as there was still a bit of snow around and it was pretty deep if you walked through it.

We then moved onto a more authentic path which proved very hard as there was bit of snow still which wasn’t the issue but actually the ice that stays around afterwards. It made the path very slippery as well as muddy where we felt quite ridiculous slipping around, holding onto trees, etc… However, considering the circumstances we did pretty well where only I slipped once, quite a funny one with no photo to proof it.

So after a few hours we arrived to the hotel to rest up a bit and have a warm shower. We then decided to get out at a different restaurant which was about a 20-minute walk. The restaurant turned out to be very good and they even gave us some complimentary shots of some local alcohol, which I had to drink both of. Surprisingly, the waiter spoke quite good Spanish! After the meal we were stuffed and walked home. A recurring theme of meals in Romania is that it are generally very good, big and filling. We struggled to digest it all thou so there were days that we only wanted to eat a salad or something light for dinner.

The next day was our final day in Sinaia so we decided to see more of the town centre which includes visiting the Sinaia Monastery. The monastery is actually the reason that the town even exists, it was originally a hermitage. It was king Carol who after visiting Sinai in Egypt decided to found a church and build his castle in that area, which he named after Sinai.

The monastery is modest but impressive. It consists of a newer church as well as the original chapel and accommodation for the monks as well as some extra buildings which I am not sure they are for but I assume they are for religious type of ceremonies. As it was still Easter, lots of people were going to the church to burn candles and pray. It even has a gate and bell tower, all impressive considered where it is situated. Surprisingly there was a fair amount of iconography, atypical of more western churches. The church and chapel were all painted with scenes from the bible which gave a very unique character, something that we did not see else where in Romania.

Next was the main casino which is a feature of the town, it was a nice building but to be honest I cannot say much else about it. The town centre was next on the list which was a single boulevard that spanned east to westwards, with all sorts of restaurants, houses, bars and shops along it.

Most of them appeared to be catered for tourists. We managed to buy some groceries for our car trip the next day, as well as our dinner (no cheese thou thanks to the cashier lack of motivation to type the code bar) as we decided we didn’t want to eat more heavy meals for that day.

Finally, we walked up the hill, a task on its own, to visit Pele’s Castle which is Carol I’s castle constructed in fantasy Germanic style. It has features from all sorts of nationalities such as an English styled garden, ottoman sitting rooms, French dinner areas to name a few. At this time it was pouring with rain so we rain inside to the sanctuary of the castle only be stuffed to the queue of other eager tourists. An interested feature of Romanian tourism is that you are required to buy a permit to take photos in addition to your entry ticket. We opted not to buy the extra ‘camera tax’ so we do not have any photos of the interior. Although this didn’t stop other people from doing so, something that bugged us a bit as it seemed the tour guide followed the rules or even bothered with giving us a proper tour (not forgetting the annoying lady that took at leas 20 pics of each room!).

We walked around the castle for about 1hr and 45 minutes going from room to room, visiting the public dinning areas, music halls and even a cinema. We also visited the more personal rooms from bedrooms to bathrooms; all rooms seemed to have their own nationality and colour themes associated to it. Overall the castle, to me, appeared to be more like a personal mansion of sorts than a castle. There was very little or no military usage and each room seemed to flow into each other which would not make sense if it was meant to be used by soldiers running around. As mentioned before the tour guide did not do much so we just received the facts like this is a oak French styled cabinet, etc… There was no personality to the tour and often reading the small plaques in the room provided more information. There was a crazy annoying lady that kept taking a ton of pictures of all the rooms we were in which was an issue as it was nearly impossible to look properly to each of the chambers. There were amazing elements such as huge murano chandeliers, a room covered in Spanish leather and central heating! The central area was also quite spectacular as it was all wood…The issue is that you are not allowed to roam the castle, nor are you allowed to stay in one room for too long as there are guides walking around telling people off for taking too long. So in conclusion, the tour was not good (shame the guide was not more eloquent) at all but overall the castle was interesting.

That night we retired early so not very eventful as we wanted to rest up before our road trip northwards.

The next morning, we woke up, ate and left swiftly. We wanted to drive up to Brasov but before we did that we wanted to take a 2-hour detour to a remote monastery located in the mountains. This monastery is called Lalomita Monastery and it can only be accessed via very windy and narrow mountain roads, roads which many of them still had snow on. It took us a while grinding through the snow, some times in our 4×4 mode which was quite exciting.

Eventually we arrived with some confusion on which road to take, mainly due to conflicting road signals and misinformation such as that the place was closed but asking others it was open (this including asking a local while Izaskun was barked by 2 huge san Bernard dogs! luckily the owner appeared just in time and she managed to ask..whether the lady understood her or not, that is a mystery). We did eventually got there and proceeded to see the monastery, in fact there is a monastery before even reaching the other monastery. We had to walk through the initial one followed by some snowy steps to a cave. Inside this cave we managed to see another very old chapel along with a massive cave that lead deep into the mountain. The monastery was amazing. All sculpted using part of the mountain, in such a remote area; makes you wonder what monasteries used to be once upon a time.

We explored these caves with a very well indicated path (something rare for us in the part of the world) to the end which has a shrine ending in a small lake or river. There were amazing stalactites and stalagmites and the interior is superb. This is what makes the cave so holy and attracted pilgrims for hundreds of years to the caves. We wondered how difficult this journey would have been in the old days, without appropriate footwear and nice stair cases to go up and down…

So after all that we needed to actually go in the correct direction to Brasov, so we needed to drive all the way back to Sinaia as there was only one road to the caves. We drove the same road back, which seemed to go faster, I suppose the return trip always seems faster. As we now knew the road it was not too bad but along the way we encountered some non 4×4 vehicles who were stuck in the snow. They waved us down, not that we had much choice as the road is only a single carriage-way and they were blocking it. Their regular car was stuck in the front and they asked if we could help push them. There was a child, a young man and 3 women, they seemed a bit clueless.

Fortunately at the same time a van full of people (I assume they were tourists too) arrived behind us and two locals appeared. They were more eager to push than we were, as we were discussed placing a log or two under the wheels to ensure they had some traction but there was not much discussion or debate and the 2 men started shouting and pushing which didn’t help much with the car. After a few minutes another van arrived and another man arrived and proceeded to do the same thing, as it seemed pushing is the cure to all. Anyways, after a while the car was slipping and sliding around up and down the road but it was not able to over come the part that it was previous stuck at. After some burning clutch and racing attempts to get enough momentum it finally managed to pass the part and continued down. The next phase now was to choreograph all the vehicles now in the single lane road to pass through, we left at the end as we had the 4×4 and therefore were not bothered by the snow too much. Izaskun gave the car her number in case they got stuck again and needed help and we then we were finally off.

The remainder of the drive was not too eventful until we passed Sinaia, at that point a large blizzard started followed by heavy rains. The sky was gray and dark but luckily we were not too far from Brasov. Arriving to Brasov we passed the outer areas which were not very attractive at all, which made us wonder whether the city will actually pretty nice. We had read much about how Brasov is the ‘pearl of Transylvania’ but we started to have our doubts or perhaps it was just the poor weather.

We arrived at the bed and breakfast just before dark which was good timing and proceeded to check-in. The lady at the desk did not care much for her job and after showing us to the room, we asked her where the light coverings, which were missing. We also asked for wifi as it had been advertised. She pretty much ran away but after us bugging her we eventually got the local handyman to come and fix all but one of the lights. The wifi we did not win as it did not reach the room.

We were a bit grumpy with the place but we decided we should explore the town a bit and go for dinner, after some research we decided on a place called Bella Musica located right next to the central town square, it was a mix of Romanian and Mexican food. We walked there in about 15 minutes and were served promptly. We ate a lot, mainly as the portions in Romania are pretty generous but on top of it the food we ate was very heavy and foolishly we even ordered dessert (the worst apple struggle ever!). That night were were so full that we even struggled to sleep, or perhaps it was the fact that our bed and breakfast was located on the corner of a main intersection and the window by the bed had no curtains, but rather a strange extra wooden frame that was not connected to the wall which they decided to put coloured lights on around it. The reason for these lights to be there is something yet to be figured out.

 

Overall the room made no sense at all us to, we could not understand why and how the room was laid out this way. Oh well… The next day we decided to explore Brasov, partially as our car now was tripled parked in as we parked on the street and people appear to park others in. We walked around town and visited the main attraction of the city walls, old town along with the Black Church. We were pretty much done with seeing everything by lunchtime. So the rest of the day were actually pretty bored and bit grumpy as we felt a bit cheated with the bed and breakfast as well as with the hype of Brasov. It was not as impressive other places we had seen. We basically walked around in circles maybe 5 or 6 times. There is a cable car however we didn’t really feel being squashed in a tiny space, plus we did this in Sinaia which was more scenic and exciting so we gave it a pass.

 

That night we ate salad as we still had not been able to digest the food from the previous night and we managed to watch some tv for the first time in Romania, needless to say it had junk like every other place but it was interesting to see the magnitude of foreign channels they had including Italian, Spanish, German, English and French.

The next morning was a warm and sunny day, which was in tune with our mood of leaving. We were happy to be leaving Brasov and move onto other interesting places. Our first stop was to Rasnov, an ancient fort that was established during the Roman times and was subsequently reused through the ages, at the moment it is a ruin.

As we arrived at 10 am, which is good for us especially considering as we also had already eaten and driven to Rasnov, we were pretty much the only people around. We walked up the hill to the ruins, paid our entry and roamed around. It was not big but it was still impressive especially considering that this used to be a very strategic Roman output and it has a well that is over 140 metres deep. It also had some great views.

Our next stop was to the “Libearty” Sanctuary which is the largest bear sanctuary in Europe. As we discovered on the tour, much of the funds that was used to open the place was funded via the UK through a charity called WAP (World Animal Program). There are only 2 tours allowed per day, so we just missed the 11am slot when we arrived, annoyingly by 5 minutes or so. We waited for the 12pm slot which was not too bad as the weather was pretty good and it was good to sit and admire some of the natural scenery. When we were allowed in we had to be escorted in a group with a guide, the guide told us some of the very sad stories about how the bears landed up in the sanctuary and some of the history on how the place was established, essentially when Romania joined the EU it had to change many laws which essentially many bears were not allowed to be kept by individuals or zoos. Many bears were put down but some were saved from abusive capturers; i will omit the gruesome details but their lives were shockingly cruel. The sanctuary has over 90 bears and even keeps some deer and wolves. They even had a wolf that was half wolf and half dog which was abandoned as the owners could not contain it, so it was donated to the sanctuary which it has integrated into a pack now. It was amusing to watch as she is the only wolf that comes up to people and that can actually bark.

After the sanctuary we drove across to the Bran, which consists of a castle called Bran’s castle (original – yes). It’s claim to fame is that it is the inspiration for Count Dracula’s castle which is so often featured in movies, books and overall media. The castle has actually nothing to do with Dracula, Vlad or Bram Stoker at all. The castle was founded in 1212 by the Teutonic knights and has been renovated, destroyed and rebuilt many times of its history. The current castle is more of a museum dedicated to the Queen Marie who was the last queen of Romania (who was actually the Princess of Edinburgh).

 

She married King Ferdinand I of Romania in 1893. She was well liked by the Romanian people and was considered to be the stronger character behind Ferdinand’s rule. She even converted her faith. The castle was one of her favourite retreats so it was obviously decorated and renovated in her style which has been largely preserved today. We managed to walk around the castle which had a bit of a strange layout but seemed a bit more like a castle comparing it to Pele’s Castle (in Sinaia).

After visiting the castle, we strolled through the town and returned to the car to explore the area. We drove down to a small village called Pestela which was in the mountains nearby. It was not very eventful as it was tiny with a single road going through it. We decided that we wanted to see how the local scenery is. We drove through an even smaller town that didn’t have a proper road called Magura. Eventually we drove over the mountain passes and took the windy roads to the next town we were planning to stay at Sighisoara.

After a couple of hours we arrived to Sighisoara which has a very interesting old town centre located up a steep hill. We checked in the hotel but we didn’t manage to see much as it was already near dark, so that night we rested and had some dinner in the local restaurant.

The hotel was nice, especially considering what we had before at Brasov but the room that we were allocated was a bit strange in the fact that the bath / shower was located literally in the middle of the room with no curtain or door. So essentially if you wanted to wash you needed to wash in the middle of the room. There was at least a separated toilet which we could not figure out why they didn’t simply include the bath / shower in the same area as the toilet instead of separating them.

 

Oh well, the next morning, we woke up had our complimentary breakfast and headed lazily out to see some of the surrounding towns and scenery. We were going to see the main town of the area called Sibiu which was the heart of the Saxon community of Transylvania. The drive was about 2 hours, not because it was far but main because there is only 1 road that connects all the towns together. We drove through at least 5 small towns which all had a distinctive Saxon or Germanic look to them, they were also pretty clean in comparison to other areas that we had seen.

 

Each town that we drove through started to look more or less the same, they appeared to have a similar structure which consisted of a single road, zebra crossings every couple of metres, a church and many houses that are built as close to the road as they can.

Eventually we arrived to Sibiu which was a lot larger than we originally thought, it was way bigger than Brasov which was a surprise to us as the books that we had read seemed to emphasis Brasov of Sibiu but in my opinion I would say that the town was much prettier, larger and more interesting than Brasov. The town centre alone was at least 5x bigger than that of Brasov. There were more than 2 cathedrals located in close proximity and it contained a high street with a much better selection of shops. The people also appeared to be more affluent that what we had seen before.

We proceeded to look around at the main sights which included the town square, the liar’s bridge (a viaduct that has a legend to collapse if you tell a lie on it), the Lutheran Cathedral (which apparently contains the largest organ in Europe) and the city walls. We also had a bite to eat at a Café called Café Wien which only serviced Austrian food, even the menu was in only Austrian which made it hard to know what to order (Izaskun had the famous frittaten soup!)

After our exploration we wanted to see some nature, we like to mix culture and nature when possible. Izaskun was keen to see a gorge or valley that was located a relatively short distance from Sibiu in the car. So we headed out to find some nature stuff but after a fair amount of driving we were not able to find it, we did find the river and dam that it was supposed to be near but there were no signs and no maps seemed to include it so in the end we decided to walk around a bit and try our luck if we could find it, even that proved to be difficult as there was no indication of where we should go or which road to take. There were some small houses around which we were not sure if they were part of the guest lodges that were meant to be present or if they were local houses. At one point we were followed by a herd of cows which seemed to want to walk up the same hilly path that we were walking, as we eventually decided we were not going to find this gorge we walked back. The cows were no in the road blocking us and moo-ing at us. A tense moment but we managed to walk past them, they watched the whole way which did not help the tense of human vs cow.

 

After that excitement we decided to return home, disappointed as we didn’t manage to see this gorge and we did not manage to see much of the nature that we intended but with the poor roads we needed to head back as it will be about another 2 hours drive again through the various small villages along the way, which we were not interested in doing it in the dark. Fortunately all went well and after a while we were back at the hotel.

That evening, in the fading light, we explored the small town of which was impressive especially as it was fully contained within the city walls and also has the original birth place for Vlad Dracul (who is Dracula / Vlad the Impaler’s father).

The next day was not so eventful as we needed to drive all the way back to Bucharest, we did not have much choice for alternative routes so we decided to simply drive back through the same road we arrived through. We need to return the car back to the airport by 12pm however with all the traffic we arrived at 1:30pm but it did not seem to be an issue and we dropped the car off without any issues. We were even lucky enough to grab a taxi right outside the car rental place to get to the hotel that we would be staying at for the night.

The hotel that we were staying at was very nice with seemed a bit more professional. After our usual exchange of information and all, we were in the room which was pretty big. It could of been a small apartment on its own, it even had two TVs which is not really needed but still cool. The hotel had a pool, sauna and steam bath so we were eager to maximise that. However, there was also something called a “Scottish Shower” which turns out of a bucket of cold water which you can pull over yourself.

Before we made use of the facilities we decided to explore the city. We wanted to see some of the highlights which was not too far from our hotel. The first being the Parliament palace which as the name suggested, is the parliament. It is huge, in fact it is meant to be the largest administrative building in the world. We walked around it but did not go inside, as we would probably be stuck there for hours. After the palace we walked to the old town which mostly consisted of bars, clubs and other smaller shops. I could not really tell you much about them apart from there is a map of some of the local and old churches that situated within the old town but overall it seemed to be a popular destination for drinking and eating.

So our last day was relaxed, roaming the city which we followed through with a refreshing swim and steam bath. The sleep was great and we were well rested for our departure the next day.

Our final day we did not do much at all apart from eat breakfast, go to the airport and wait. Wait and wait for the flight as we arrived a bit too early and as the airport does not have any counters for British Airways we had to wait until 2 hours before the flight before we could actually drop off our bags. The flight back was not eventful and was not even full. So with all that we were back to London, back to work. Our Romanian roaming was at an end.