Days 23-Day 28 Romania

All smiles leaving Hungary

The overnight train from Budapest to Bucharest was a bit disappointing. The quality of the train was much less than desirable. The coach was fourteen years old and had seen a lot of use. The worst thing though was that the air conditioner was not working and until the middle of the night we were pretty uncomfortable. We opened the window to get a breeze that eventually helped. Somewhere during the night we must’ve gotten awful close to trees since we had a lot of leaves in our cabin the next morning that were ripped from the trees and found there way onto Andrea's top bunk.  We did enjoy the meeting the cabin guests next-door,  a dad and son traveling  to Bucharest for a little getaway. They were from the UK and we enjoyed chatting with Stuart and his preteen son Adam for quite a while and trading stories about the political landscape in our respective countries. 

Us with Stuart and Adam

First view of the Carpathian Mountains 

After deciphering the Uber procedure and pissing off the driver because our luggage would not fit in his trunk, we made it to our hotel in midtown Bucharest. Our room was not ready so we stored our luggage and parked ourselves in the lobby for three hours until it was. The hotel was a beautiful old hotel built in the early 1900s and refurbished once or twice. We were fortunate to score a suite with three balconies on the top floor and it was really beautiful. Had an outstanding meal at a recommended restaurant right around the corner and ate the traditional Romanian fare plus a decent bottle of wine.

Sunset from our balcony 

Andrea had chicken and potatoes and Bill had cabbage rolls and polenta.. 

We had some fun entertainment during dinner! 

One of our stops by our hotel was the local market for some wine and beers. But most interesting was the marketing or un marketing on the cigarette packs. They try their best to ban smoking or make it as disgusting as possible on the packaging. The clerk said it was a law. Zoom in! 

The main tourist attraction in Bucharest was the Palace of the Parliament so we made reservations for a tour. They say this place is bigger than the U.S. Pentagon. It was under construction when the communist threw in the towel and was eventually finished afterwards. It has something like 1,000 rooms and is over 3,930,000 ft.². It is the heaviest building in the world weighing in at 9.04 billion pounds and took over 20,000 laborers to complete. Quite a place to see but honestly, we didn’t think it was quite as elaborate as its counterpart in Budapest. 

Stavropoleos Monastery, built for nuns in 1794

We stopped for a Coke at a local cafe and chatted up the street hawker
 who persuaded us to take a seat. She explained she gets a percentage
 of sales for all customers seated during her shift. 

Bucharest Palace of Parliament 

Senate floor

This chandelier weighs over 5 tons

The longest hallway in the palace

This room is decorated pink because it is a neutral color and does not
represent any political party

Human Rights Hall,  round table with 60 identical chairs 

An idea of of how big the columns are 

We then took the two-dollar local’s bus out to the Hard Rock Café for the pin purchase and a beer. It was a little bit remote, but in a nice area by a lake and near where many of the embassies are located. We ended the night with another very good Romanian meal in a restaurant near our hotel. Our overall impression of Bucharest was not all that favorable. As one of our hotel clerks said very accurately… “It is a city built on a bad skeleton”. The traffic was terrible, there was more graffiti on the sidewalks and  walls than we have ever seen, and with exception of the very old buildings and architecture the place was just not attractive. Chalk it partially up to the communist screwing it up during their tenure, but there’s still no excuse for all the graffiti (even the ATM machines have graffiti all over them)!

Toasting Pin #71

The Romanian Airmen Heroes statue, dedicated to those who died during WW1

Arch of Triumph

If you zoom in on the pic you can see the deterioration of the buildings. 

View of Parliament from our hotel balcony 

The plan for Saturday, June 7 (Day 25) was for us to pick-up our reserved rental car and start a four-day circular route of about 600 miles north of Bucharest into the Carpathian Mountains and the area known as Transylvania. One of the highlights of this was Bill’s special internet deal with Payless Car Rental for a Mercedes sedan for $25 a day. So, after an Uber ride up to the Payless rental shop, we arrived to claim our $25 Mercedes. Thus began one of the biggest rip-offs we’ve experienced in recent memory. Sure ... the daily rental rate was $25 but by the time they added their mandatory insurance fees, senior citizen driver fees, and several other undisclosed items the real rate was over $125 a day. Plus, our Mercedes had 274,000 km on the odometer and every scratch, dent, and bug mark was documented in the hope we would add to the collection and be charged even more. Needless to say, we were not happy as we drove out of the lot and not to mention being a little intimidated that something would happen with this car to further add to our significant budget overage. Anyway, we vowed to put it behind us and to at least navigate our way out of Bucharest. With Bill driving and Andrea navigating using Google maps ... away we went.

The destination for the first night was Sibiu, Romania. This was a fairly large city with the old town being where our hotel was located and it was very, very quaint; completely different than what we just left in Bucharest. Another special deal that Bill had unearthed was the presidential suite at the hotel in the old town and this time it was right on target! This massive room was over 3,000 ft.² and occupied the entire fourth and top level of the building. It was quite a treat to stay in it and the price was ridiculously cheap. In fact, as a general comment, the prices in Romania were VERY inexpensive, compared to some of the other countries in Europe, and particularly those that we had visited so far.

Our suite on the 4th floor

The kitchen

The bathroom, except there were no lights in the shower or the toilet area...hmmm. 

Nice drinkware

A lot of room to spread out 

View from our bedroom

The bakeries had the best pastries 

Romanian woman headed home from church

Beautiful sunset

Old city streets 

These massive cones of dough are called chimney cakes. They are cooked over hot coals and then filled with whatever you want, Nutella, butter cream, jams,  after being rolled in whatever you want, sugar, cinnamon, Oreo cookie crumbs, nuts, etc. 

Roses are everywhere

View of the Carpathian mountains in the distance 

Common occurrence in the smaller towns 

Large storks were nesting on most of the telephone poles 

Interesting story with this church pictured above, inside the church grounds, along one of its fortification walls, is a small building with a room inside barely larger than a pantry. For 300 years, couples whose marriages were on the rocks would find themselves here, locked away for up to six weeks by the local bishop in hope that they would iron out their problems and avert a divorce. They proudly let you know  that there was only 1 divorce in over 300 years. 

The next day, the destination was Sighisoara, Romania another ancient town that was even more quaint and beautiful than the previous night. Here, we stayed in a building that was over 400 years old and included all the furnishings from the era. Very charming hotel, building and town.

The streets were very narrow and this parking spot was a little tight. 

Cool hotel bar

Andrea finally tried goulash and bill stuck with stuffed cabbage and polenta. Polenta is definitely  an acquired taste.

First cigar for Bill smoked in a great setting. 

The Scara Acoperita also known as the Scholars Stairs are a covered staircase that connects the upper and lower parts of the citadel. They lit them up at night with luminaries. Originally built in 1642, the stairs were intended to protect students from the elements while walking to school and to connect the city center to the Church on the Hill. The stairs were originally 300 steps, but after modifications, they now have between 172 and 176 steps. 

The last night of our Transylvania tour was in Brasov, Romania. We chose this town as somewhat of a staging area for our tour of the “Dracula Castle” the next day. It was a another very quaint town. We spent the afternoon just walking around the enormous old town and around town square and enjoying people watching while sipping on very good Romanian beers.

Beers in the town square

Andrea bought a bracelet from this sweet Romanian woman selling her wares. When asked for a picture she gladly obliged but wanted to see the picture because she wanted to make sure her teeth (or lack there of) were not showing. 

Narrowest street in Brasov and one of the narrowest streets in Europe. 

Bill was not impressed! 

The Black Church, its walls were sooted by a fire in 1689. 

The Dracula castle is located in Bran, Romania. It is the product of marketing since neither Dracula nor his castle was ever a real thing but only the product of the author Bram Stoker. The castle actually was that of a Romanian queen in the 14th century and it is certainly worth seeing if you’re into Romanian history, but had it not just been on the way back to drop off the car, we probably would’ve been a bit disappointed.

Hidden stairwell in the castle

I WANT TO BITE YOUR NECK!!!

Medieval torture tools 

The Thomason signature smile...

Traffic jam

In any event, the Payless Rental Car debacle ended without further damage to our pocketbook, and after dropping the Mercedes back off, we shuttled over to the Wyndham-Bucharest Airport to stage ourselves for the long day tomorrow flying to Dubai.

Clearly, the rural part of Romania is a beautiful place and a beautiful countryside. It truly is like going back in time where people own horses and buggies as their only mode of transportation. We wondered if these people had ever even heard of Donald Trump and Elon Musk or any other current world affairs. We doubt we will ever make it back to Bucharest, but we’re glad we added this last country to our Balkans tour to contrast to Slovenia  and Hungary. On to U.A.E.!