Bran Castle

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We rented a car today at the nearby Radisson Blu hotel and made our way north. We drove through a town with a Chernobyl style nuclear power plant which was interesting to see. As we got further north the clouds rolled in as we entered the dramatic Carpathian Mountains of the Transilvanian region. We were on our way to spooky Bran Castle the former home of Vlad Tepes, also known as the inspirational source of Dracula.

(In full disclosure, we realized before we made the trek up here that Bran Castle really didn't belong to Vlad, at best he was maybe imprisoned here a few days, but we weren't going to let pesky details like that stop us. At the end of the day, you have to consider that you're visiting a "vampire's castle". So we can't be stopped by too many dubious details, or the fun goes right out of the fangs balloon.)

We couldn't have set the scene better if we were making a movie. As soon as we entered the mountains the sky filled with ominous clouds and it began to drizzle an icky grizzly drizzle of death. Although it was only early afternoon, it began to feel like dusk. I truely feared the sun would leave us, and we would be at the mercy of Vlad's evil animal minions. Most of the mountains were soft green rolling hills but every so-often jagged rocks would jet above the landscape to remind us that this was no ordinary mountain range. I swear I heard wolves howling in the distance, but maybe it was my imagination. Robyn fell asleep. Was she just tired, or was she already under the Master's spell?

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