A couple of months ago I saw a deal on Wizzair to Transylvania for basically free, so I purchased tickets for the family to visit Dracula's land in Romania. After a driving trip to Romania a few weeks ago, we decided that it would be easier to do this trip by ourselves, so we left Katie and Ashley with some friends in Budapest and boarded a flight early Saturday morning for Targu Mures, a city in central Romania, in the heart of Transylvania. We hardly prepared for this trip, just bringing a borrowed Romanian guidebook and a photocopy of the two places we wanted to visit from our 1000 Places to See Before You Die book (Dracula's castle and the painted monastaries of Moldovia). We arrived at this small airport with no real clue where to go. Fortunately there was a rental car place, or rather, a guy, a counter, and 2 automobiles. I had been told by a Romanian friend at work to NOT rent a car from this type of place, but we had little choice, as this city was in the middle of nowhere. We decided to risk it, even though the guy only took cash, the first car he gave us had a dead battery, and we were only required to put Euro 100 deposit down. Not sure how this amount would deter a dishonest renter, but I figured if the worst he could rip me off for was Euro 100, it was worth the risk to have transportation in this country.We drove first from Targu
Mures to Sighisoara, Dracula's (Vlad the Impaler's) birthplace.
We saw his childhood home where he learned the art of impaling his enemies with wooden stakes so that they would live for 48 hours in tortuous pain before they died. The city is on a hill, which we walked around its streets, all made of bumpy cobblestone. We walked around the town center and to the top of the Clock tower which houses a historical museum and allows for a wonderful view of the city. We bought a picture next door to Vlad's house, which is now a restaurant. The city is eerily intriguing, despite a cardboard cutout of a vampire with fangs and black cape standing in front of the entrance to the restaurant.From Sighisoara we drove to Brasov, where we didn't stop because as we drove around it, this supposedly called "Prague of the East" seemed more like "insert your least favorite looking city here". So we drove immediately the 30 KM southwest of Brasov to Bran, where "Dracula's" castle is located. Although it is depicted as his castle, Vlad the Impaler actually never lived here, although he MAY have stopped over for the night while on one of his crusades through the countryside.
But evenstill, the commercialism of
this legend is well maintained outside the castle grounds. Being so close to Halloween, it was fun to be there and see everyone dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Once inside the castle, though, any remnant of vampire legend disipates and is replaced by a Little House on the Prairie version of Versailles. Basically, think plainly furnished and the complete oppposite of the ostentatious castles of the West (or North into Russia, for that matter).We decided to go the long way to Bucharest because it included Romania's ONLY stretch of highway (about 50 Kilometers). It was an incredibly scenic, meandering drive, providing spectacular views of the virgin country side. Once we finally did get out of the mountains and finally did find the 50 KM of highway, we were disappointed to find out that 45KM of it was under construction, forcing us to drive even slower than we had through the mountains. But we arrived in Bucharest, just randomly drove around until we ran into the downtown historical district, including the Marriot Grand Hotel. It was starting to get dark and we were starving, after having only eaten granola bars all day, so we asked at the Marriot where to eat and they directed us to Ruby Tuesdays for just a mediocre meal. Knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us to our next destination, we decided to drive north towards the Painted Monastaries in NE Romania. We drove a couple of hours, as far as Bazau (300KM south of Suceava). There are as many horse and carts on the road as there are cars, so never was the drive easy, although the stretch of road between Bucharest and Suceave were by far the easiest to drive, as there were no mountains, and the road had 2 shoulders that served as passing lanes. From Suceava we found the Humor Monastary, about 25 KM from Suceava.
This one was particularly beautiful inside, including a fresco of the Last Judgement. Maybe a five minute drive was
the Voronet Monostary, whose outside still maintains most of the original painted frescos created hundreds of years ago. Most of these monostaries were built and painted between 1500 and 1600 AD under the direction of Stefan cel Mare. We then continued on to the Moldovita Monastary, whose gardens were particularly impressive, with stone walls and towers surrounding it, reminding us of the Monostary in Les Miserables where Jean Valjean lived with Cosette while hiding out from Javeir. Also reminds me of the monastary icon in "Age of Empires", but who knows.
We debated whether to visit a fourth monastary, but feeling like we wanted to ensure we
made it back to the airport in time, we decided to skip it. Unfortunately, as early as we thought we would arrive at the airport, we did not succeed due to mountains, rain, construction, and literally herds of cattle surrounding our car while trying to make it back to Targu Mures. What looked like a couple hour drive on the map ended up taking closer to five hours and we arrived at the airport just as our flight was leaving, not able to get on. Heather cried, but that wasn't enough to make them hold the plane for us. Remember that rental car guy that seemed so shady? Turns out he was the nicest Romanian we have ever met, as not only did he return my deposit in full, without any issues whatsoever, he also let us use his internet to find another flight back to Budapest (our only option before this was to wait an entire day, since there was only one flight a day to Budapest). He helped us find a flight leaving Monday morning at 6:30AM leaving from Cluj Napoca (about 2 hours NW of Targu Mures), helped us arrange a taxi (who couldn't have driven slower and then tried to charge us 70 Euros instead of 50...settled on 60 since I was so tired at that point) and hotel room by the airport in Cluj. Without his help we never would have returned home as flawlessly as we did, although it cost us about $500 extra for missing that flight, as we had to buy two new tickets home (vs. the basically free ticket we orginally flew in on), the cab ride, and the hotel expense. We were still nervous the next morning because we had to be at the airport at 5AM to purchase our ticket from the travel agent (airlines don't do their own booking much in Eastern Europe), but nobody arrived at the agency until 45 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave. Fortunately we were able to quickly make the arrangements and made it back to Budapest early Monday morning, ready to start a busy day and super excited to see the girls again.
Mures to Sighisoara, Dracula's (Vlad the Impaler's) birthplace. We saw his childhood home where he learned the art of impaling his enemies with wooden stakes so that they would live for 48 hours in tortuous pain before they died. The city is on a hill, which we walked around its streets, all made of bumpy cobblestone. We walked around the town center and to the top of the Clock tower which houses a historical museum and allows for a wonderful view of the city. We bought a picture next door to Vlad's house, which is now a restaurant. The city is eerily intriguing, despite a cardboard cutout of a vampire with fangs and black cape standing in front of the entrance to the restaurant.From Sighisoara we drove to Brasov, where we didn't stop because as we drove around it, this supposedly called "Prague of the East" seemed more like "insert your least favorite looking city here". So we drove immediately the 30 KM southwest of Brasov to Bran, where "Dracula's" castle is located. Although it is depicted as his castle, Vlad the Impaler actually never lived here, although he MAY have stopped over for the night while on one of his crusades through the countryside. But evenstill, the commercialism of 
this legend is well maintained outside the castle grounds. Being so close to Halloween, it was fun to be there and see everyone dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Once inside the castle, though, any remnant of vampire legend disipates and is replaced by a Little House on the Prairie version of Versailles. Basically, think plainly furnished and the complete oppposite of the ostentatious castles of the West (or North into Russia, for that matter).We decided to go the long way to Bucharest because it included Romania's ONLY stretch of highway (about 50 Kilometers). It was an incredibly scenic, meandering drive, providing spectacular views of the virgin country side. Once we finally did get out of the mountains and finally did find the 50 KM of highway, we were disappointed to find out that 45KM of it was under construction, forcing us to drive even slower than we had through the mountains. But we arrived in Bucharest, just randomly drove around until we ran into the downtown historical district, including the Marriot Grand Hotel. It was starting to get dark and we were starving, after having only eaten granola bars all day, so we asked at the Marriot where to eat and they directed us to Ruby Tuesdays for just a mediocre meal. Knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us to our next destination, we decided to drive north towards the Painted Monastaries in NE Romania. We drove a couple of hours, as far as Bazau (300KM south of Suceava). There are as many horse and carts on the road as there are cars, so never was the drive easy, although the stretch of road between Bucharest and Suceave were by far the easiest to drive, as there were no mountains, and the road had 2 shoulders that served as passing lanes. From Suceava we found the Humor Monastary, about 25 KM from Suceava. This one was particularly beautiful inside, including a fresco of the Last Judgement. Maybe a five minute drive was 
the Voronet Monostary, whose outside still maintains most of the original painted frescos created hundreds of years ago. Most of these monostaries were built and painted between 1500 and 1600 AD under the direction of Stefan cel Mare. We then continued on to the Moldovita Monastary, whose gardens were particularly impressive, with stone walls and towers surrounding it, reminding us of the Monostary in Les Miserables where Jean Valjean lived with Cosette while hiding out from Javeir. Also reminds me of the monastary icon in "Age of Empires", but who knows. We debated whether to visit a fourth monastary, but feeling like we wanted to ensure we 
made it back to the airport in time, we decided to skip it. Unfortunately, as early as we thought we would arrive at the airport, we did not succeed due to mountains, rain, construction, and literally herds of cattle surrounding our car while trying to make it back to Targu Mures. What looked like a couple hour drive on the map ended up taking closer to five hours and we arrived at the airport just as our flight was leaving, not able to get on. Heather cried, but that wasn't enough to make them hold the plane for us. Remember that rental car guy that seemed so shady? Turns out he was the nicest Romanian we have ever met, as not only did he return my deposit in full, without any issues whatsoever, he also let us use his internet to find another flight back to Budapest (our only option before this was to wait an entire day, since there was only one flight a day to Budapest). He helped us find a flight leaving Monday morning at 6:30AM leaving from Cluj Napoca (about 2 hours NW of Targu Mures), helped us arrange a taxi (who couldn't have driven slower and then tried to charge us 70 Euros instead of 50...settled on 60 since I was so tired at that point) and hotel room by the airport in Cluj. Without his help we never would have returned home as flawlessly as we did, although it cost us about $500 extra for missing that flight, as we had to buy two new tickets home (vs. the basically free ticket we orginally flew in on), the cab ride, and the hotel expense. We were still nervous the next morning because we had to be at the airport at 5AM to purchase our ticket from the travel agent (airlines don't do their own booking much in Eastern Europe), but nobody arrived at the agency until 45 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave. Fortunately we were able to quickly make the arrangements and made it back to Budapest early Monday morning, ready to start a busy day and super excited to see the girls again.
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