Blogs from Brasov, Transilvania, Romania, Europe - page 8

After crossing the busy Romanian border crossing, (busy for lorries - not for us fortunately ) we headed north for a stopover in Romania’s Capital Bucharest. The guide books didn’t say too much to write home about Bucharest but we had to go through it anyway, so seemed sensible to stop. Bucharest is a clash of old and new. Ceauşescu the last communist dictator, raised a lot of Bucharest to the ground, to not only build his Parisian type boulevards, but also the second largest building in the world, the Parliament building with its 6000 rooms. They don’t make it easy for tourists with no information at bus stops where buses go and the Underground stations that don’t have maps where the trains go, apparently they don’t go anywhere they were only designed to take workers ... read more

A day with no Florin means we got to sleep late. Still up by 8:30am, and hit the road at 10am. I did not do any yoga this day. The plan was to take a cab to St. Bartholomew's church, then walk to the nearby bus station to catch the number 20 bus to Poina Brasov. We found a very friendly cab driver who spoke English. He said he would wait for us while we were at the church, then would take us to Poina Brasov for 30 lei. We decided to take him up on that plan. No sign of life at the cable car, so we thought our plan was not going to work out. Enjoyed a very tasty lunch on a deck at the base of the ski slopes, gorgeous views. Noticed a ... read more

I was up at 7, feeling quite good -- considering how many empty wine bottles are in the kitchen. Short yoga routine, then breakfast, then shower, then got organized for our first day trip. We met Florin outside at 8:30; we had a surprise guest along for our tour. She was a very quiet young woman from Japan. Sadly, none of us can remember her name. The car is a smallish car but with a third row of seats. The Japanese girl was in the front passenger seat, three of us in the regular back seat, and one in the “back back”. Quite cozy. Today's tour is the “three castle tour”. We drove through a few small Saxon villages, and Florin explained how to differentiate the Saxon buildings and the Romanian buildings. Saxon buildings have a ... read more

Rooming with Leslie means early rising. :-) She woke up at 6:30 and opened the drapes. I got up at 7, and did some yoga while she went for a walk. It's a very pretty day, warm with blue sunny skies, so I started on the balcony, but the concrete was a bit hard -- I moved inside for floor poses. Leslie came back and at 8:15 we headed out together. We walked to Old City, which was completely deserted except for some unhealthy looking street dogs cleaning up after last night's revelers. It was fun to see the same place again, in the light. We explored a few more blocks than last night, and found an old Greek Orthodox church at the dead-end of a torn-up street. Today is Sunday so there was a service. ... read more

We headed south. Then east. Then West. Camping is free in Romania. This means if you want to find an actual campsite you have to know where one is. A six year old Lonely Planet is probably not the best source of information, and this is what we had. We drove through Sibiu – couldn’t find the campsite. Couldn't find the campsite in Curtea de Arges either, and the campsite another 50ks down the road looked truly ordinary. A brief stop at a random servo for diesel and beer. We bought some dark beer which is dangerous – a lot of it had turned out to be sickly sweet malt based stuff. In the lolly section at the same servo though - truly excellent liquid rum centred chocolates. These would have to wait until the evening ... read more