Well well ladies and Gentlemen it has been a bit of a while since the last installment but here we are again, finally. We have been having a great time in Romania, a very surprising country to say the least! We were warned that the capital city, Bucharest, was the worse part of Romaina and we found that it really isn't too pretty. We only spent a night there and had a quick stroll round the main part of the city but a thunder storm set in a we quickly moved on to Transylvania.
We were settled in a town call Brasov which is in the heart of the land of Dracula, and boy do you know it! The locals are certainly cashing in on the whole Dracula and Vald the Impailer legends, thez sell anything from mugs, t-shirts and jewellery boxes with 'Vald' or 'Dracula' in gothic script. However, this did not take anything away from the actual experience of the Carpathian Mountains and the beauty of Transylvania. We avoided the orgainised tours as they we really expensive and went with 4 others to Bran Castle where the Romanian royal family lived. It was a beautiful place and didn't take long to walk around. On the way back we stopped in another town with a castle called Rasnov. This place was really breath taking, literally. We got off the bus and the castle was up this massive cliff. We had to walk for about half an hour round to the back of the mountain that it was on, uphill all the way! Was really worth it thought, we had great views of all three towns, it was gorgeous.
The next day we walked around the town of Brasov, we met some Brits and we all went round together. We went up to the Hollywood-style Brasov sign in the hills which we had to reach by cable cart...it was all very exciting and the view was just as good as Rasnov. We had both caught a cold by this point so we took things a little slower during this part of the trip. After taking in what atmos was left, we caught a train to Sighosoara which was the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. It was a very pleasant town and luckily the weather held up nicely. The citadel was very old-fashioned and sported museums of torture, armaments and town history. Vlads old house had been converted into a rip-off restaurant so we just strolled on by it. On the whole, Sighosoara is a great place as long as you limit it to a few days as you can easily run out of things to do.
We highly recommend anyone to visit Romania, it isn´t as run down and dangerous as everyone thinks. Would definately visit again in a few years time, especially Bucharest, as it is currently a fledging EU country...
Will keep you all posted again soon
xxx
