Halloween with Vlad: Bucharest and Transylvania, Romania

I love traveling Europe in the autumn.  The leaves are changing, it’s time for warm stews and mulled wine–a beautiful time of year!

Our latest adventure was a weekend trip to Romania with four good friends to explore Bucharest and spend Halloween at one of Vlad the Impaler’s (Dracula’s) Castles.

The Stewarts, John and I took the red-eye from London and landed at 3am Bucharest time.  We stayed at the beautiful historic Hilton Athenee Palace Hotel, apparently one of the most notorious hangouts for spies pre-World War II and during the Cold War.

The following morning, we were up and out after only a few hours of sleep to head to the Palace of Parliament.  The building tops many lists including:  the world’s largest civilian building with an administrative function, the world’s heaviest building, and the world’s most expensive administrative building.  With so many accolades, we just had to see it!

The tour ended on a terrace overlooking the city.

Our next discovery was a beautiful church hidden amongst some communist era blocks.  During Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship, many of the churches in Bucharest were torn down, surrounded by communist blocks, or moved away from main roads.  This one we found was surrounded by communist blocks.

We then took a stroll through the city to see the sights!

Before heading to dinner, we found at that the Hills had missed their flight–and it was questionable if they would be able to make it to Romania!  We went to dinner hoping and praying they would be able to make it…

We had dinner at Caru cu bere.  Good local food, drink, and entertainment!

In the middle of our meal, we found out the Hills were going to make it!!

For a nightcap, we headed to a local wine bar called Dionysos Wine Bar.  The staff could not have been more helpful in selecting our bottle of wine.  He went over the flavour profile of several bottles then helped us to pick.  It was delicious–we even bought a bottle for the road!

The next morning, we took off on a road trip to Transylvania!  We had a little tire trouble to start and ended up at a delightfully backwoods Vulcanizare (aka tire shop).  We noticed many of these little shops during our journey–probably a testament to Romania’s roads!  Fortunately, all we needed was a little air and off we went!

Our first stop was the town of Sinaia, home of Peleș Castle.  The castle is Neo-Renaissance in style and was built between 1873 and 1914.  It was one of the most ornate castles we have seen, taking many of the most incredible features of other European castle and combining them into one.

After leaving Sinaia, we drove to Bran, home of Bran Castle, where we would meet the Hills and would be spending the evening with Vlad (Dracula).

After dinner, we donned our finest Halloween apparel before heading to Bran Castle!

To Bran Castle, we go!

The next morning was gorgeous….we had breakfast at a roadside bakery in Bran and then took off for Brasov, our final stop on the brief tour of Transylvania.

Unfortunately, after leaving Bran we had a run-in with a traffic jam in the mountains on the way back to the airport that resulted in John and me missing our flight.  So, to make the best of a bad situation we had one final Romanian dinner in Bucharest before catching the first flight out on Monday morning (and heading straight to the office!!).  Fortunately, it was delicious 🙂

What a wonderful trip with wonderful friends.  We got to see so many beautiful places in Romania–enough to definitely want to go back and see more.  It’s always so fun to share the discoveries with close friends 🙂

Thanks for reading!