Travel Blogging Archives - Page 11 of 40

Transylvania Green Way walking tour.

Posted on November 1, 2013November 5, 2013

Today (30th Oct 2013)I ventured out of Bucharest to go with Mihal on his two day Green Way walking tour to Transylvania.

We left on the train in the morning with our first stop at Sinaia to visit the Royal Palace of Peleș Castle I’m sure culture vultures could easily spend a week here, for me, I just wanted to be on top of the magnificent Bucegi mountains that overlook it., although we did take a peek at the art nouveau exhibition. Next stop on our whirlwind tour was Brasov where we changed trains for a small independently run train to Zarnesti .

At Zarnesti it was time for some real walking in the The Piatra Craiului National Park, we ventured up the gorgeous limestone gorge with it’s documented rope climbs at Surplomba & Faleza Arcadel we turned around and walked up the hill to our nights accommodation at Pension Pepino in Magura. The landscape is very reminiscent of what Switzerland mountain villages must have looked like 50 years ago.

After an excellent dinner & good nights sleep on a glorious day we ventured of again, up a very steep slope and onto a fantastic ridge with amazing views down to Zarnesti and across to a very rocky ridge in the distance. A splendid walk accompanied by a dog that followed as from Magura. We descended down to Bran admiring Dracula’s castle on the way. Then it was a bus to Rasnov where we walked up to the remains of Rasnov Citadel. Another bus ride and we were in Brasov and its splendid medieval city centre, another place I intend to revisit!

All in all a great two days of a whistle stop tour with excellent walking. A good introduction to Transylvania and Carpathian mountains. The price for just me was on the high side but obviously if you go as a group of 4 or so it would be considerably cheaper. Mihal is an excellent guide, very flexible in accomodating your needs and speaks very good English.

The photographs of the days are here and here and here is a overview of the gps trails.

Bucharest

Posted on October 29, 2013August 26, 2021

After all the biking I’m pleased to have settled in one hotel for 5 nights. The Rembrandt is perfect in many ways;

Fast, really fast, internet,
Amazingly good breakfasts with unlimited gorgeous coffee and fresh fruit salad 🙂
Spacious room with desk to work at.
Great staff
Best location, step out into downtown old town through a great cafe.
Notice I’ve left out the shower, it’s OK but not high power or step in, well there has to be something 🙂

The only problem is that it’s very full so I have to move on tomorrow.

I really like Bucharest it is a compact city, lots of culture (yet to be fully explored eg Opera, concerts, museums et)c An excellent mix of refurbed old, & ultramodern cafe’s with a real beat, olde worlde charm, eclectic shops plus a rawness with the graffiti, redevelopment areas, artist squatter communities. Oh and it’s still relatively cheap. This place could be once again one of the great European cities.

On Sunday I had a serendipitous experience bumping into Mihai on one of his free guided walking tours around the city & his excellent introduction into the lost skills of impaling a victim by Vlad the impaler plus a lot more modern history on the 1989 revolution, beer in Romania etc etc

Over a lunch beer I decided to go on his partner’s Simona’s excellent afternoon’s Alternative Tour taking in graffiti & very cool artist’s cafes. Highly recommended to see a city that is on the edge.

I also signed up and did the Bike Tour of Bucharest (well I did have my bike) If you haven’t ‘ already cycled 3000 miles to get here then it would be an excellent introduction into cycling in a city not geared up for cycling. The parks you go through are all very beautiful and its excellent to learn how the prominent statues change with each leadership; Nazism, Communism, Democracy. plus of course lots of other great info. Both tours excellent and highly recommended.

Today whilst walking to Decathlon Berceni. I suddenly realised that all Nicolae Ceauşescu’s grand plan of huge buildings, broad streets etc so reminded me of my visits to Dubai in fact I reckon they must have used the same architect.

So as you can tell I really like Bucharest 🙂 Tomorrow, Im going with Mihal on his two day Green Way walking tour to Transylvania exploring Zarnesti, Magura, Bran castle & Brasov.

There pictures of Bucharest Saturday, Sunday, Monday

here is a collage of cabbages made from today’s (Tuesday) pictures:

Final day of cycling on The Danube Bike Trail – Constanta to Tulcea

Posted on October 23, 2013August 26, 2021

This was my 28th day of pedalling on The Danube Bike Trail. With today’s 93.5 miles it made my total mileage from Cambridge to be 2,996 miles of which 3,071km was on The Danube Bike Trail as outlined in Book1, Book2, Book3 & mostly Book4 (I stayed in Romania) of the Bikeline series

It started by going through all the ghost summer holiday towns all wrapped up for the winter. At Navodari you actually get a short & bumpy stretch of real bike track 🙂 then onto long straight but hilly roads all well made & pretty quiet though pleasant enough villages. You eventually hit the nightmare stretch of Highway 22 for 14km before turning off to Jurivloca. straight into a roaring headwind. I’m not sure quite why this area has such beautifully kept roads & pavements. Must be to do with the all the wind farms I guess.

It started to get late by the time I reached Agighiol so I skipped the big detour and went straight to Tulcea, which is just as well as by the time I arrived it was pitch black & my front light ran out of battery 🙁 coupled with AroundMe failing, by sending me the long way to the hotel where I was told it was full! they were lying of course but I had already spotted The Hotel Rex so that’s where I ended up pretty well exhausted.

I hadn’t spotted any places to stay except maybe a pension around Enisala so it’s a pretty long day.

All the time in Romania I haven’t seen ONE E6 cycleway or any navigation signs for The Danube bikeway

Here’s my Strava and some pictures

Strava_Ride___Constanta_to_Tulcea

Day off in Constanta

Posted on October 23, 2013May 28, 2019

Tuesday 22nd October

After yesterdays tough ride from Silistra on the Bulgarian)Romanian border I decided to take a day out and luxuriate in mv somewhat faded 5 star accommodation.

I managed to get the data sorted with Vodafone on my iPhone, I think it broke because I tried calling the UK on my Romanian number. This wasn’t allowed so basically I lost my data plan. £9 later I walked out with another 1GB of data all working.

I went into a few travel agents, but they all laughed and thought I was nuts wanting to return to Budapest on a boat 🙁 The town itself is one hell of a mess with all the pavements torn up whilst they are laying miles of ducting for cables, interestingly using masses of labour rather than diggers. Took a lot of effort to find a coffee shop but worth the wait to find Zoomserie and it’s yummy ice cream & pleasant staff after a haircut it was back to the hotel.

In the afternoon I took myself of to the docks & Pier 31,the grain terminal. Fascinating to see the huge queue of trucks waiting to unload the corn alongside the hundreds of rusting, disbanded railway wagons. I spoke to the manager who rang the shipping company but it was all no can do. I pottered off to the ships that were loading corn up. One was off to Izmir, i suspect if I had $150 to thrust in his palm I could have had a lift, but didn’t fancy Turkey just yet. The other boat was of to Pakistan. It’s interesting and I feel you can travel this way but you need hard cash in your pocket & your stuff with you. Another time maybe…

So basically there seems to be no straight forward way to get a boat back up The Danube from Constanta. Tomorrow I continue to find The Danube,

Some pictures of the day are here.