Days 14 -15 “In medieval times...”

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We left Braşov behind and headed for Sighisoara about 1.5 hours northwest-ish. Their claim to fame is their meticulously preserved medieval citadel and the house of Vlad Tepes who the town info says was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s character Dracula (Dracula means “son of Dracul”...Vlad’s dad (Vlad Sr.’s) name was Vlad Dracul, so that makes junior...you see where I’m going). Junior did his fair share of impaling, apparently.

Our hotel was inside the walls of the citadel and was very quaint. We could drive in to drop off our luggage, but had to park outside the citadel walls (parking is super cheap - 5 RON ($1.61 CAD) for 24hrs. The historic citadel area is extremely compact and we walked up and down every street and saw all the sights, including the room where Vlad Tepes was born, the various guild towers, main square, covered staircase, churches, spooky cemetery and the multi-level clock tower museum, in under 3hrs.

The clock tower is a must - great museum with lots of history about the citadel and displays on each level of the tower. The climb ends at the top of the tower where you can get a bird’s eye view of the city. T’s fitbit recorded that we went up the equivalent of 33 flights of stairs between the tower and the covered staircase.

Day 15 we headed back to Bucharest, but took the longer way back so we could check out Sibiu for a taste of 12th century Saxon architecture. Very nice historic centre, but fairly large and commercial in its modern state. We spent a couple of hours walking around and stopped for a quick bite (soup - Romania has been all about soup).

It took us longer to drive back than anticipated, but the drive was gorgeous. Beautiful scenery and good roads. We had to look up the speed limits because there aren’t many signs posted. It turns out there are different speed limits for different kinds of vehicles. Our rental car (a Ford « Kuga ») got excellent mileage and after 4 days of driving we could have gone another 200 km before needing any gas (we started with a full tank). Since we had to return the car full, however, we filled the tank (at a cost of about $70 for 45 L of diesel). The last stretch of our drive was on the A1 which has a speed limit of 130km/h so we made good time on that part. Back home it’s rare to get a highway with a limit above 100km/h so this was gloriously fun.

Super pooped, but now that we’re in the land of good wifi, I’m getting caught up on my posts and other interwebby stuff. ´Night, folks!

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