Bucharest, Brasov, Cluj Napoca

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We crossed into Romania today and with crossing from ex-communist to ex-communist it only took 1 1/2 hours! We stopped at a small hilltop town called Vecchio Tarnavor (Velcro for short) which has a large fort overlooking the town.
There was a little group of old men with a clarinet, accordion & singing for the tourists. They were sitting in front of a bar - playing for their beers.

We arrived in Bucharest where the highlight of the tour was the 2nd biggest building in the WORLD - the Palace of the Parliament - (only the Pentagon is bigger) which for all extents and purposes, bankrupted Romania. It was commissioned by the ex-communist leader of the time as his house and office buildings but he never got to see it finished. He was executed on December 24, 1989 after a 30 minute trial (guilty until proven otherwise - he didn't stand a chance - but then he was probably guilty). His dream was to give speeches from the balcony with thousands of loyal subjects below hanging onto his every word. Except the only person to ever have given a speech from this balcony was Michael Jackson and he said 'Good evening Budapest!' - bad mistake!

There was lots of confusion with the Romanian money. There's old style stuff which says 500,000 lei and the new stuff which has cut off 4 zeros (ie 50 lei) but they equal each other - it only got confusing when we went for dinner next to our hotel and couldn't figure out the smaller denominations for the waiter - he ended up having to point out all the money for us.

It was a good day - not action packed because there wasn't a lot to do in Bucharest - but we stayed in a hotel which was nice. (not high class, but had running hot water!) With a few people holding 'hotel room parties'.

Next day - we had some free time in the city of Bucherest this morning. Only problem, public holiday and everything was closed. Literally everything. We couldn't even find a corner store that was open. We had 3 hours to kill - nightmare!

We had a 12.30 pick up and Nev planned to drive for a little bit and then have a service stop and lunch, except there were no service stations open. At all. Eventually we found a Carrefour open, (which is a BIG supermarket) so we pulled into their car park. We angled the bus in to hide that we were setting up tables and lunched in the car park but the security guards still came over and told us off. Apparently, where we were setting up was blocking the traffic (we were literally at one side of a giant and almost EMPTY car park). Nev went 'for a walk' with the guards to sort out where he should park, and telling us to eat and pack up really fast, so he could buy us some more time. It worked and we were all fed and hit the road again.

That afternoon we visited Bran Castle. We were worried about this stop as several people were looking forward to it but we didn't know if it would be open on the public holiday.....

It was! But unfortunately, it didn't live up to some people's expectations - not haunting or scary... quite pretty and country style villa actually! It was all white, with a few bits of dark wood furniture (I can't remember if they were original or not... I'm guessing not). We were aware that Dracula probably didn't actually live there... but still he was apparently from the area.

We had a nice stroll around to check out the old village life style. We loved our quick market dash and picked up a secret jewellery box each.

Then went to a different town (Brasov - say it slowly, everyone took this as 'bras off'😉 so it was our first night back in tents... for the rest of the trip....the only difference was were were camping in paddocks with sheep running around us here. This was just a camping stop but it was really lovely. The Romanian country side is beautiful.

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Photos

Inside the castle
Niki and Des

Where Dracula (Bramstoker) died
Sighisoara