Monthly Archives: August 2013

Romania – Dracula’s castle

We had breakfast at the pension (included with room price). Not a buffet here but fried cheese, sausages, bread and coffee. See pic.

Then we went to catch a local bus since the castle is 23km from the town. The bus is a minibus with a sign in the window. There are designated stops, but not designated times, so you just flag down the bus get on and pay the driver. The 1st driver was very helpful and wanted to make sure we got off in the right place and headed in the right direction. It was 2km to the base of the steps to get to the castle. There are pics as we got closer to the castle. As you can see in the last pic it is that small building on the hill of the hill in the middle of the pic.

To get to the castle we had to do 1550 steps to get to the top. It was hot today but at least there was a breeze. It was hard doing that many steps, but we made it!

There was a guide at the top even though the ruins are relatively small. She walks what we did everyday to get to work- she sure doesn’t need to join a gym. Also many pics on my camera. The walk down was much easier than going up but I was surprised at how long it seemed for us to get down. There was a restaurant there so, of course, we stopped for a cold drink. Then we walked to 2km to the bus stop and caught the bus back to town. I should tell you that here in Curtea de Arges the old women still wear babushkas and there are still horse and donkey drawn hay carts. Instead of hay bales and rolls the locals here dry and stack hay on homemade triangular racks – like those you see in old photos.
We did our usual for a place to eat, but there are not many restaurants here. However, the portions in Eastern Europe are huge and we have started ordering appetizers. I had a Serbian salad and potatoes fried with bacon, onions and peppers. Marsha had a pickle salad and polenta stuffed with cheese and Stephanie had dishes very similar to Msrsha’s.

Tomorrow we return to Bucharest by train.

Bucharest, Romania

We were in Bucharest a total of 3 hours. We got on the train in Sophia. It was a Russian train, very nice and air conditioned. The 3 of us were in a 4 bed couchette so we had plenty of room. Much nicer than the crowded, non-air conditioned train we had the night before.

The final destination of the train was Moscow with stops in Kiev and Minsk. All was fine but the air stopped working in the middle of the night. When we stopped for the border crossing it took almost an hour for everything to clear. We woke up early – thank goodness- because we were just outside Bucharest. The conductor was sound asleep and he had our Euro rail passes so we had to wake him up, we don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t get off in Bucharest because we need visas for the Ukraine and Russia. We got to Bucharest about 6am checked into our hotel to take showers and headed for the train station to catch a train to Petesti. In Petesti we had a 2 hour wait for the train to Curtea de Arges. We just went to McDonald’s across the street for a soda and to kill time. It was only 90 today, so not as hot as it has been. In Petesti no one spoke English and we needed to buy a ticket to Curtea de Arges. The ticket lady only spoke Romanian and Italian. A man came along and asked us if we spoke French. So with limited French we made ourselves understood to the man and he translated it all to Romanian. We bought the tickets and said “merci”. We laughed ourselves silly about how crazy this was.
We arrived in Curtea de Arges and were looking at a map when a policeman from the train station came over and gave us directions. Of course by the time we got to the pension we were dropping with sweat. But we are now in Transylvania.

Naturally we went on our restaurant search. Here is what we came up with.

We have to get up early for tomorrow. Just to let you know there is no direct train from Belgrade to Bucharest – we have not lost our minds yet.

Belgrade, Serbia

Belgrade is another beautiful city. We took a free 2 1/2 hour walking tour. We went up to a castle and had panoramic views of this modern cosmopolitan city.

The people here are extremely nice and very helpful. Believe it or not most speak English. It was very hot again today so we stopped in a major square and had Mojitos – the only drinks with ice in them.

I took a picture of the sign because we are now in countries that use the Cyrillic alphabet. Naturally we had to look for dinner. It was looking grim at best so we stopped in a little place that at least had pizza. Well it turned out to be a gem. We had Serbian salad, vegetarian pizza and a cold plate with a selection of meat and cheeses. What a gem of a restaurant- everything was great.

Then we went on to the train station. I had it backwards- first the overnight train then the train to Bucharest. Well the train was not air conditioned and we were in a compartment for 6 people. We had the windows open, but it was still hot. The train was supposed to leave at 7pm and did, but it went 10 feet and stopped because the engine broke. We only had an hour in Sofia to make our connection. It was a long hot trip and if course we arrived late – we also gained an hour because we are so Far East. We missed our connection and are now at 4pm sitting in the train station for our 7pm overnight train to Bucharest. Because we arrived in Sophia at 10am we walked around Sofia until now. It was hot, but only in the 90’s. We stopped on an Irish Pub for Mojitos and had a cheese plate and some wings.

I am also sending pictures of a really neat bridge in Belgrade. Also, I have many pics of Belgrade on my camera.

I also forgot to mention our hotel in Belgrade was extremely nice and very modern. We were there only to take a shower and sleep – best of all breakfast was included. On the buffet along with the usual they had breaded fried eggplant and what we thought was onion rings. The onion rings was really squid! But there was also a tray of fancy cookies that were really delicious. We are outside of our train now and the train’s final destination is Moscow. Tune in tomorrow (pending WIFi) for the further adventures of Marsha, Stephanie and Barbara.

Belgrade, Serbia

It is 9:30pm and we are still on the train
to Belgrade. We left at 1pm and were supposed to arrive at 9pm and we still have at least an hour to go. It was very hot when we left Budapest- over 100 again. Officials we passing out liter bottles of water at the train station and crews were watering the trolley tracks (I guess so they don’t buckle in the heat). The air conditioning could not keep up on the train so we rode most of the way sweating. When we crossed into Serbia they hooked up an air conditioned car and the conductors directed us to go sit in that one. The air conditioning only lasted about 10 min and we were back to sweating. The dining/bar car had the older windows that were down half way and if we were moving there was a breeze. Problem was we were hardly moving- we could have walked faster. I think the intense heat had a lot to do with this too.
It is now 1:45 am and we just got back from dinner. Belgrade looks nice. Of course we came in at night but they have some really neat bridges. As you can guess we made it to the hotel and they recommended a restaurant that serves until 1am we hurried over there because we were tired and hungry. The walk to the hotel was uphill, but it seems that we are always walking uphill. I had a Serbian dish, Marsha had a beautiful (according to the menu) salad and Stephanie had gnocchi with Gorgonzola sauce. We are trying to plan tomorrow since we are only here one day and leave on an train to Sophia in Bulgaria and then take an overnight train to Bucharest in Romania. The Serbs we met speak English and are very helpful. Will let you know how our travels progress.

Budapest, Hungary – Day 3

It was hot here today- at least 102 degrees. We had a private tour of Budapest in an air conditioned car the entire morning so we got to see all the sights. We then went to the hotel to decided what we would do the rest of the day. We decided we would have to do something indoors since it was just too hot to walk around. We decided on the Terror Museum. This is a museum about the Hungarian version of the KGB in the actual building where they were housed and held prisoners. There was a ton of information and we were there until it closed at 6pm. It was a little cooler by then so we walked a few blocks to downtown Pest. We had taken the subway to the Museum. Then it was time to check for dinner. We all agreed on a restaurant that had a menu of tastes of Hungarian food. The small portions gave us a chance to sample a lot of different things. Appetizers- I had palacintas with chicken filling, Marsha had an eggplant cream with toast points and Stephanie had 1/2 pepper stuffed with cottage cheese and paprika. For dinner Stephanie and I had stuffed cabbage and Marsha had goat cheese with grilled mixed peppers. Dessert – I had palacintas with apricot jam and Marsha and Stephanie had palacintas with nut filling and chocolate sauce and whipped cream. As we were walking toward the subway we came upon a rock concert. It was an Irish Band and they were good. I told Marsha I was going back a few steps to take a picture and when I went back I couldn’t find them. I looked for about a half hour and decided just to walk back to the hotel. I wasn’t in the room 5 minutes when Stephanie and Marsha came in. They said they looked for me for about a half hour and thought I would return to the hotel. When we were comparing notes we figured we must have passed each other several times, but it was very crowded in that area plus it is nighttime. Well we are all safe at home. Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter than today. But we leave for Belgrade, Serbia tomorrow and hopefully things will cool off a little bit.