Passage To Eastern Europe Viking River Cruise
Day 4: Monday, October 31, 2022 - Transylvania, Romania, and Bucharest, Romania
The day's statistics:
- Weather: low 60s
- Steps: 8,285 Linda; 9,833 Steve
Today is Halloween.
Though it was a leisurely morning, we still set the alarm to keep to our schedule.
We headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, and we had a buffet. There were cold cuts, pre-made omlets,
scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, breads, juices, coffee, and some other items.
We returned to our room to brush and finish what little bit of packing we had to do.
Our room had a window that could be opened - though you can't tell how narrow it was from this angle as it was
only about two feet wide, and had a half-height protective barrier (visible, but barely, in this image).
Some of the views out the window.
We didn't get all our rooms, but here was ours at this hotel.
Time was up and we went to the lobby for our bus.
Just before boarding, we took a couple minutes to walk down to the Mc D's near the hotel to get some prices,
but none of the pictures came out.
Our hotel on the way back.
We departed at 11:05 (and not because of us) and it was a 45 minute drive to Bran Castle.
On the way, we learned of the local history of Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Vlad was a strong leader, and he took
actions to intimidate his enemies. For example, where does the name Dracula actually come from?
Vlad's father was given the honorary title of "Dragon", which is "Drac" (Drac also happens to mean "devil").
The article "ul", meaning "the" is added to mean "the dragon", or "Dracul". The "a" is added to mean
"son of", or, in this case, "son of the dragon", or... Dracula.
And what was the point of the impaling? The impaling was used as psychological warfare - successfully too -
against his opponents and invaiding armies.
How did the "living dead" become associated to Dracula? Apparently, getting impaled is very painful. Some
that got impaled passed out and maybe came to, and or die from the pain. But their bodies would occasionally
twitch - primarily due to spasm and or rigormortus setting in - and these movements, after the impaled were
believed to already be dead, were associated to the "living dead". Fun stuff.
Some views from our trip to the castle, including some mountains, churches, and other sights.
The foretress of Rasnov.
We finally arrived in Transylvania. And our first Bran Castle spottting.
The bus dropped us off at the beginning of the Galer A Bran, sort of a small farmer's market, with a restaurant.
We walked through, and were told we'd meet at this end at 3:30, after our castle tour, and lunch and shopping on
our own (aka "free time").
When we arrived, the castle had not opened yet for the day. However, the vendors selling anything and
everything Transylvania and Dracula related were open for business. We patiently waited to enter.
We were on the group line, and entered shortly after the gates opened.
We met briefly just inside the gates. We were shown the original layout of the property -
which was actually originally a fortress.
Near the map were some booths that seemed to be original souvenier booths, but now they just
had some bottles of wine, liqueur, and brandy on display.
And a couple shots on the way up the hill.
We had a litte bit of a hike up the hill to the castle at the top.
This cross was origianlly erected in 1751. It was moved to Bran Castle in 1922 from Saint Pantelimon Moastery at
the wish of Queen Marie of Romania.
Some views from the walk up to the castle.
It was Halloween, after all, and there were a LOT of visitors to the castle.
We were finally at the top. It took nearly an hour to get to the top. Not that it was long, just time consuming
because they were letting people in slowly.
I did the best I could with the pictures, trying to keep tourists out of them, but also trying not to clog up /
interfere with the flow of people.
While we saw a lot of rooms, there was also some open-air courtyard and other spaces.
We started on the castle's first floor, and proceeded up. We saw the main courtyard, sitting
spaces, decor, and some other sights.
The first picture below is probably my most favorite picture at the castle, if not the entire trip (as I type this).
The narrow corridor / passageway that surrounded the courtyard - one story up - was used by soldiers to
get from one tower or wall to another to defend the castle.
The look-out tower.
The original road through the property wasn't paved... There are two portions of the original wall visible
here: toward the upper left in front of the small field, and on the right above the open space.
Queen Marie's dress and bedroom (the bedroom doors [not pictured] are the oldest interior element of the
castle, dating back to 1693).
Queen Marie's flag.
This one section shows the different construction components of the castle: wood, brick, stone, and concrete.
Looking out the window (duh, right?!!?).
There was one "back staircase" that was dark, and very narrow. I was able to capture this shot while accending
the flight.
At the top of the staircase, there was a very low threashold - so low that Linda, at five foot two, had
to duck, as did the fellow traveler captured coming through. The doorway is to the left of the bookcase in the
second image.
A shot from the sun deck. Yes, sun deck.
Portrait of Queen Marie and Princess Ileana from 1909.
Photo of Princess Ileana in 1931, on her wedding day with Archduke Anton of Austria.
Just a reminder: it was Halloween. There were some images and videos running that were projected onto a couple walls
in a couple different rooms.
And continuing on.
A Madonna with some 3D (attempted to be captured in the second shot).
Linda's phone (I didn't take all the pictures here...) focused on the case, so this is the best that
can be produced working with what I had.
I originally thought this was an interesting light. Then I saw employees removing the decoration - it was left over
from the previous weekend's party (Billionaire Elon Musk had rented the entire place for a VIP shindig).
After the last spiral staircase, we exited the castle.
We proceeded down the hill - past the long line of people still waiting to enter.
At the bottom of the hill, we followed the path toward the side of the castle (I guess technically it would be the
back), donned our fangs, and tried to get a selfie. A fellow traveler offered to take our photo, which was a much
better idea. And I reciprocated.
We still had until 3:30 to meet near the bus - so, nearly two hours.
We walked around the property a little longer. Then exited the gate into the area with the vendors.
We did a [very] little shopping, then looked for somewhere to eat. We passed by a few locations, stopped by
six, and settled on the restaurant in the market. Seating was full and we would have had to wait, which we did
at a table at the other end of the facility.
With no end to the waiting in sight, we decided to leave and return to one of the restaurants we already passed.
We had a sausage, garlic potatoes, and bread. We cut the sausage in half lengthwise, and made a "hot dog" out of
it with the slice of bread. It was a heavily seasoned sausage that wasn't too spicy, but it was pretty good.
We did a little more walking around, and headed back to the market. We decided to share a cup of gelato. It
was a vanilla with berry flavor of some sort, but we don't know exactly because the names were in Romanian.
And it was yummy.
Our visit to the Bran Castle and Transylvania came to an end, we boarded the bus, and headed back to Bucharest.
We had a little more than two hour ride ahead. Some shots of the countryside, towns, homes, and other sights.
We spotted this domed / bubble thingy - have no idea what it could be.
We passed an amusement park of sorts, called "Children's City". It looked like they had a number of bouncy house-like
structures, a go-kart track, ATV, and a small train - that we could see.
The back of Rasnov Fotress (pictured toward the top above).
On this busride, as in other locations, it was evident that if a home has a second floor, they tended to have a
balcony or seating area of some sort up there. Besides that, here are some country / rural homes.
We made a 20 minute "convenience break" at a gas station with a convenience store.
After using the restroom, I noticed a guy kissing a girl.
After browsing through the store, we decided to get coffee. I got on line at the food service counter. The woman
that kissed the guy earlier was on line in front of me. She ordered two sandwiches, chips, and a beverage.
I was next. The guy that kissed that girl had a toy truck. Since I didn't understand the language, I figured he
just wanted to pay for the truck. So I let him go. But then he ordered a sandwich. And had questions. Now I
wasn't sure if they were together or not. Linda picked something up that she wanted to buy and put it on the counter.
He started asking questions about the sandwich and it sounded like he was asking about bacon. Regardless, we rapidly
ran out of time, and without making a purchase, got back on the bus.
Out journey back to Bucharest continued.
This was captured because there is a strip of bright green trees amongst all the others.
We saw this church "in the middle of nowhere". I tried to capture it, but...100km / hr (60 mph, possibly).
We got back to the Marriott hotel in Bucharest at about 7:00.
Time for dinner. We certainly weren't going to "go into town" for anything, so we returned to Cucina for another
light dinner.
We had the complimentary bread again. This time it was facascia bread. When we asked the waiter about it, he
said that the rolls we had received teh previous night was becase they ran out of facascia bread...
We shared another bottle of wine.
And we shared a napoli pizza.
After dinner, we retired to our room, and eventually went to sleep.