We were all feeling a bit tired after the long journey yesterday, so a (semi) relaxing day was in order. We rocked up to breakfast at about 9am - all of our nights in Romania include breakfast, even though this place is self catering.
Breakfast was very nice - a real mix of things but plenty to fill us up. This place has a great rating on booking.com and it's easy to see why - we arrived to a fridge full of drinks, great breakfast included, always on hand to help, free bikes to take out and a lovely mini football pitch/playground for the kids.
I made up some sandwiches and we decided to head out to Sighisoara, birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, and apparently a very pretty town. Distances between places in Romania seem very large, and all the more so when they're only connected by minor roads. It was an hour's drive, and we were pleased to discover when we got there that Sundays mean free parking!
It is indeed a lovely place, although chock full of tourists. Still, wandering around the back streets was peaceful enough, and we found a quiet spot to eat our lunch. Then we found an ice cream place with whippy ice cream (which Jowan's had a bit of a craving for!) and James and the kids queued only to find that when they got to the front the ice cream had run out :(.
We peeked into a few shops, the kids bought a bit of tat, and then we headed up the covered steps to the church at the top of the hill. With a couple of good Spanish guitar buskers at the top and the covering shielding us from the hot sun, it was quite pleasant. However, after walking round the church and admiring the view there wasn't much more to do up there so we came back down the steps to the tune of 'Nothing Else Matters'.
Up till now we hadn't had a sniff of Vlad except for the countless 'Dracula' t-shirts in the souvenir shops, but we now walked past the house he was born in, now a restaurant. We declined the option to visit the room he was born in for 5 lei each, and headed instead to the clock tower, which looked a lot more interesting!
We paid a total of 40 lei or so to go into the museum, which had rooms on each level as well as the stairs that led up the clock tower. It was small but interesting, and thankfully the steps weren't too crowded, although on a busy day it must be very difficult to make your way up and down. The views from the balcony were definitely worth the climb, and as an added bonus we were there on the hour and got to watch the mechanism doing its thing. James took a video which should be on YouTube at some point!
We were all a bit hot and tired by this point, so we decided to take another shot at getting ice cream, and then head back. Thankfully the ice cream seller had restocked and reopened, and we soon had 5 ice creams in hand for 20 lei (about £4). The journey back was uneventful, and it was the kids turn to make dinner, which we enjoyed with Romanian beer and wine.
After dinner we set the kids the task of looking up Vlad the Impaler, which we did as well. It was all very interesting until I clicked on the Wikipedia link for 'impalement' and wished I hadn't...
Then an early night because tomorrow we're getting up at a 'stupid' 6am so we can have early breakfast and get to a bike park 3 hours away... Just hoping for good weather and no accidents, and I guess you'll hear from Felix tomorrow!
Published on Monday 16 July 2018
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