We left Moieciu de Sus and headed to Bran to visit the famous castle. It was really interesting to read about the history of the castle and the history surrounding Vladmir the Impaler and of course Dracula himself. I'll be honest that the castle was not at all what I thought it would be. After seeing Peles Castle yesterday, this one was a rabbit warren of halls and rooms and passageways. It was not decorated, it was not fancy, and it was not scary at all. I thought that it would be more caught up in the whole Dracula thing (although ultimately I'm glad it was not) but I thought I would be more wowed by it...and was somewhat disappointed. I'm so glad we went to check it out and it did have a certain charm...just not what I had envisioned.
We had decided the day before that we wanted to make this a long driving day and go up to see the old medieval city of Sighisoara. This was going to add at least 2 hours to our driving time, and we had to get all the way across Romania today - so it was going to be a long day. After seeing Bran Castle, it was time to get started. We headed north to the town of Sighisoara...it has come highly recommended to us. It was a lovely town and we had lunch in the park before walking up into the town square. Dave, mom and I walked all the way up the covered walkway from the 1600's to see the beautiful church at the top and then it was time to get a move on.
Back in the car we started to head west across Romania. Romania doesn't have an extensive highway system, it is mostly small national roads that wind their way through every town imaginable. Every 5km or so you need to slow and make your way through a town. The towns are absolutely gorgeous though. Houses are painted every colour of the rainbow - bright pinks, turqoise, purple, yellow, hot red etc. Lovely flowers are planted out along the houses and roadways making it such a nice drive. In almost every town is a beautiful church with steeples that are adorned with silver and gold. One of the other neat things is that because of the heavy agriculture and farms in this area, that you often are sharing the roadway with horse drawn wagons filled with hay or other things as well as tractors.
The ride was long for the kids and they did pretty well. I include the below video to give you a glimpse into our lives on this day. Those with children know all about this!
As we made our way west the terrain started to flatten out into more rolling hills and countryside, the predominant crops being corn and sunflower seeds from what we could tell. We also noticed that sheep seem to be huge source of agriculture here as well...and all the herds are accompanied by a real shepherd! So cool.
After a couple of hours, we hit one major highway for approximately 100km before it came to an abrupt end, and we wound our way along the country roads for another 75km. Although the road conditions up until this point have been very well kept, we were about to hit a major change as we turned off onto a rural road to make our way to our place for the night.
When picking the accommodation, I had tried to intersperse some "off the beaten track" stuff into the big city stuff. I like the idea of getting a feel for the way that locals live and not just be in the hustle and bustle of the large cities all the time. Tonight we were staying in the country, and the road was ROUGH! It took us a long time to wind our way to Casa Altringen. The road literally had huge squares cut right out of the pavement - no way you were driving straight through them without totally annihilating the bottom of the car, so it was slow going to get to the place.
When we arrived, we were tired and burnt out from the long day. The place was lovely and serene though, and they had a great spread of cooked potatoes and amazing stewed meat, soup and bread. We feasted and enjoyed the hammocks outside, listening to the sheep bells and braying. It had been a really hot day, but the night air was cool and our rooms were adorable. We all went to bed early and slept well.
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