Today we did a tour of some of the castles and a fortress near Brasov. It was one of the tours that you can do through the hostel. We woke up early so that we could partake in the free breakfast, make our salami sandwiches for the road, and be in the reception for our tour by 9:30. This time around, there were two other people signed up for the tour with us, so they mostly hung out on their own and we didn't have awkward lunch conversations like we did on the Rila Monastery tour. That was good.
The tour today covered three places: the Peles palace in Sinaia, the Bran Castle in Bran (famous for supposedly being Dracula's Castle), and the fortress in Rasnov. The Peles palace was about an hour away, so we the drive over took a while. The Peles palace was probably my favorite of the castles that we saw today. It was very pretty. I took a lot of pictures of the outside, but you had to pay 32 Romanian lei to take pictures inside, so I didn't take any inside. It's a pity too because the inside was really nice. It was decorated with a lot of woodwork, there was a huge weapon room, and then they had a lot of themed rooms. They had a German-themed room where everything was from Germany, there were several Italy-themed rooms with chandeliers made from Murano glass. The coolest was probably the Moorish room. Apart from the themed rooms, walking around the castle also had a slight air of walking through the Haunted Mansion, especially with the big mirrors everywhere. Another cool fact about this castle is that it is like the first building in Europe that used an elevator and had central heating. It was a very nice palace.
Oh fun story from while we were hanging out with the driver. We were waiting for the couple to finish exploring the palace grounds. Our driver pointed to this family who were bickering about something and translated what was going on. One of the kids pulled a dead bird out of the fountain and showed it to his dad saying that it was very beautiful. The parents clearly were unhappy about this and we watched as the dad tried to brush the bird away with a branch and the mom watched disgusted and horrified. Then the kid tried to explain himself to the mom saying "But mommy mommy, it's so cute" and tried to touch the mom, who recoiled and shuddered in disgust. Then, the kid went back to the fountain for a second around and we watched as the dad was trying to pull the kid out. I'm so glad that he translated that scene for us. It was hliariouos.
The next stop took another hour and we were finally on our way to the Bran castle. Mia and I had purchased fake vampire teeth for this occassion so that we could take fun pictures in front of Dracula's castles. One of the things I was most excited about before going there were the cheesy souveniers that I was expecting them to sell all over Bran. Unfortunately, there actually weren't that many. They had cheesy souveniers, but they were not fun cheesy. I was hoping for "wooden stakes" or something like that and they had none of that. It's weird too considering how cheap and easy those would be to make.
In any case, we ate our salami sandwiches that we packed (the Bulgarian sandwich bread we bought was kind of gross) and headed up to the castle. The Bran castle was pretty much just a castle. It was not as cool or pretty as the Peles palace, but it was still a pretty cool castle. We took fun pictures with our vampire teeth and wandered around. There were some really great views of the area from the top of the castle. After exploring the castle, we went back down and met up with our driver.
After Bran, we drove over to Rasnov to see the fortress. This was closer and it only took about 15 minutes to head over. The day had been a pleasant one so far. There had been a nice breeze and it was actually almost cool. It was the first day in a while that I did not feel gross after walking around for 10 minutes outside. At least, that was the case until we got to the fortress.
The fortress is at the top of the hill and, as any other old stone fortress may be, it was incredibly hot there. Our driver left us at the bottom of the hill, and we had to take a rickety tram up to the top to get to the fortress. It took us up most of the way, and then we had to walk up another 5-10 minutes before getting gto the entrance of the fotress. Once inside, we had to walk around uphill even more. Mia, who hates exercise, sweating, heat, and dusty old fortresses was not happy with this place. We explored the fortress for a while and made it to the viewpoint at top before heading back down and getting ice cream. She was happy again. We took the tram down and met up with the driver and headed back to Brasov. On the way back, we talked a little about soccer. Apparently today's a big soccer day for the big Romanian soccer teams.
We got back and took a nap before heading back up. Unfortunately, we got out too late to make it to the free walking tour, so we just explored Brasov a little on our own. We wandered around the major pedestrian street for a while and made our way to the main town hall square and the Black Church (which is the big church in the city). From there, we went to "Rope Street," which is the narrowest street in Southeasteren Europe. I don't know if it should actually count as a street. It was more like a narrow hallway, but whatever. It was kind of fun to walk through it.
By that time, I'm sure there were other tihngs we could see around town, but it was 7 and we were hungry, hot, and tired, so we headed back towards the hostel. We grabbed some food from the supermarket and then got some really good kebabs and ate them by the park. These were really good kebabs. We're probably going to get them for lunch before we leave for Bucharest tomorrow.
Anyway, we've really enjoyed our time here in Brasov. Romania's probably been our favorite stop out of the three that we've been to on this leg of the trip and is probably the country of the three most worth returning to, especially since all of the medieval cities are north of here or something. Tomorrow we head on to Bucharest.
Oh, also, there's this cat at this hostel that Mia wants to kidnap. It acts like Bruce. I think she's renamed it Bruce Cat or something.
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