a stopover in Brasov, Romania


As there was a night bus going directly from Chisinau to Brasov, without having to navigate Bucharest, I thought I would stop off there for a few days on my way back to Bulgaria. 

It's a very pretty town, which I wandered around taking photos of the old houses, the remaining bits of city wall, and a few other attractive buildings such as this one to the left, and I also did a steep hike up the mountain that overlooked the town, zooming in to take the photo above of the main 'square' in the old town. But it all felt extremely touristy and I didn't really enjoy it as much as I had my time in Chisinau.

One of the reasons for stopping there was to visit one of the famous Transylvania castles.  I was told that most people who visited Bran Castle ('dracula's castle') were disappointed, and that Peles Castle was much better, so I worked out how to get to the train station and took myself off to Peles Castle for a day, with a couple of other guests from my hostel.

It was quite spectacular to see as we walked up the mountain, but we weren't really sure that we wanted to pay £26 to visit all three floors of the interior.  At some £8.50 per floor we decided that one would do - but then as my two travel companions got the half-price student rate and I got the half-price retired rate it didn't seem so bad, and one of them bought a ticket for two floors.

We duly toured the ground floor - very impressive (the best of everything available at the time it was built and furnished, some 100-150 years ago), in a totally over-the-top way.  Then we reached the entrance point for the higher levels, and were discussing where to meet, when the ticket lady beckoned to the three of us to go through - to the route taking in both of the remaining floors - as her guest!  So we got great value-for-money that day!  However I should say that in general I've found people in both Romania and Bulgaria, whilst quite reserved and not all that smiley, to have actually been rather helpful and welcoming.

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