Advertisement
17 May 2010
Bucharest had some interesting museums. We visited a Museum dedicated to a Romanian composer and another cultural museum which was really great. They had a traditional house set up in one of the rooms - really interesting. We managed to get a car organised from the airport and we headed up to Reghin, the town of violins. We had a big driving day and saw some remaining snow up in the mountains. We stopped and had some lunch in a small village set amongst the snowy mountains, we passed up the opportunity to try some traditional tripe soup. It was a very pretty drive and we enjoyed the different trees. We passed through Brasov, which had a really lovely square and the black church, which was burnt in a fire in the 13th century.
After a coffee break we continued up to Targu-Mures, which is only a short distance from Reghin. We searched for a hotel on the internet but did not book online and were surprised to find the hotel much cheaper with a walk in rate than an online booking rate. We had a really lovely dinner there, as it was quite late, and
only then realised it was Mothers day. Targu-Mures was absolutely huge; we were expecting a small rural village.
We arrived in Reghin the next day and after asking around we headed to the violin factory. The man was very nice and he spoke English, which was a bonus. He spent heaps of time with us. Rachel tried about 4/5 violins and then had a go of a more expensive model, which of course sounded amazing. Guess what she got? It is absolutely gorgeous, sounds amazing and she is really in love with it. It was also really great to see how the violins are hand made. It is going to be fun trying to get in onto flights as carry on, because she won’t be keen to check it in.
We really enjoyed Romania; it has such pretty country side and really lovely people. Occasionally we saw gypsies, in traditional dress walking along side the road, or riding in heavy horse drawn carts. We’ve also seen farmers ploughing their land using horses and their neighbours doing the same using tractors. The people are really friendly; we had a shopkeeper let us use their internet for free etc.
After returning the car to the airport we flew Maliv (Hungarian Airline) to Budapest. Budapest city is really lovely especially around the Danube River. It was so cold when we were there, well not really, we are just whingers but it did rain and blow and was pretty miserable. We didn’t let this dampen our spirits and we enjoyed the city, tram rides, goulash dinner, general sightseeing. We were all pretty shocked to see the number of homeless people sleeping in any dry spot they could find. We also saw a man breaking into a public phone in a very busy public space. He did not seem concerned at all with all the people passing by. It was quite depressing to see so many people living like that.
From Budapest we trained it to Bratislava. It was a really pretty train ride for approximately 2 hours. More rain when we arrived and after a small disagreement about a ridiculous 15 euro taxi fare for a 1 km trip we trammed it to our hotel in the rain for a mere $1.50 for the four of us. The city itself was quite pretty especially in the touristy restaurant area but
everything was closed, cold and wet. We had a very average hotel there and we decided to head to Austria, Vienna the very next day. We did manage to catch up with a uni friend of mine from Buderim, Tonielle, and we visited her in her youth hostel for a drink. We had been trying to catch up for days as we basically chased her around Eastern Europe. She too had been in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. The trip to Vienna was via hydrofoil down the Danube, which I really enjoyed. Vienna is a really lovely city, so so pretty. It was so cold though. We had a great time despite the weather; we went on a city tour and a Mozart/Strauss concert which turned out to be a real highlight. We stayed at the weirdest place, an out of town tennis club building. Fantastic though - super clean, lovely breakfast so all good.
From Vienna we flew to Frankfurt where we collected our Mercedes (whoo hoo) rental car for 12 days. We were disappointed there was no passport control at the airport, so no stamps - again. From here we plan to visit my family and friends in
Nederland and go to Amsterdam.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 14; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0512s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb