As we left Comarnic, we commented on how it had now been nearly 4 whole weeks without our setup, staying in houses, apartments and hotels, moving from bed to bed to bed all that time. After repacking and reorganising and culling again, it felt almost like we were starting our journey anew.
So off we headed into Transylvania, towards Bran Castle, where we had already scoped out a campsite as we knew we would be lateish arriving, the aptly named Vampire Camping Bran.
Luckily it was still light when we arrived so we could easily choose a level spot, and set ourselves up quickly ready to enjoy dinner watching a lovely sunset over the mountains. We had been told we were sharing the campsite with two massive groups of German (20 vans) and French (10 vans) campervanners, who were having a ball with their group dinner, especially the Germans singing songs well into the early hours. I was impressed with their stamina, as we were so tired we were in bed by 10pm!!!
We took a while to get going the next morning, and did a bit of catching up on cleaning and organising the car and trailer, and watching the German & French contingents pack up their vans and leave. We always feel like it's a bit of an effort for us to pack up, especially putting away the tent; we often we discuss the pros and cons of caravans and campervans, but really it seems to take everyone a lot of faffing around before they can just up and leave to go anywhere; they are still putting away awnings, chairs and tables, cleaning windows, etc. It's one of the benefits of the trailer being able to leave it behind all set up to go exploring, but a bit harder setting up or putting away our tent if we are on the move every day.
Before it got too late we headed into Bran; we found a rock star park outside the Castle, and went to find a snack before we went in.
There were a few supermarkets and fast food stores, but the supermarkets didn't have any warm snacks, and the fast food joints seemed on the pricey side (tourist mecca of course!). We ended up finding a little bakery, but it didn't seem to sell the yummy cheesy bread we saw everyone else walking around with. We got a semi satisfying snack and off we went into the castle.
Bran Castle is known for being the castle written about in the book Dracula, but Vlad the Impaler (who Dracula is loosely based on) never actually lived here. It belonged to Queen Maria of Romania, who left it to her daughter Princess Ileana, and her descendants still own it today.
We had been told it was a must see, and we must agree, the castle itself was incredible, beautiful old rooms and furniture over multiple levels, with amazing woodwork, stone features and wrapped around a lovely courtyard - the only downside was the many other tourists who were also there, blocking the doorways and crowding the stairwells; we keep saying it's better to get to these attractions early before the tour buses, but sometimes its just too hard to get going in the mornings! Hopefully days like this will keep us a bit more motivated to get going earlier.
Once we had our fix of the castle and the lovely large grounds, we snuck out the back exit (i think the tourbuses came in this way) and were back at our car, where the lovely parking attendant was sitting right next to our car - how's that for service? And it was cheaper than any of the large parking sections on our way in ... double win!
We decided we hadn't done enough sightseeing and drove towards a small town called Zarnesti which we had been told was lovely, and it took us further towards the mountains of Piatra Craiuilui. We drove a little up into the mountains to look at the views, only realising later how close we were to the Pestera drive we had been on recently. We really hadn't moved far at all!
Back to our campsite via the local Mega Image supermarket to stock up for a few days, and to enjoy the rest of the late afternoon.
Next up, we had found an interesting area that had mud volcanoes; there was a campsite nearby but we had no idea how much it would cost, the last review said approx 45 lei (which is around £8) but it was a few years ago .......
Again arriving at a decent hour, we asked how much the site was. The man answered 1000 lei (a leftover from communist times where the currency was so devalued that it was in the thousands); we didn't really know how much that meant, but he waved us into a site and we parked up, it was so picturesque but we were a bit concerned that the price would be more than we wanted to pay.
If we aren't sure what the price is, we tend to pay upfront so we know for sure; so off I went to the reception to pay for our one and only night. It was a different man this time, so I asked again how much. 35 lei for one night, plus 10 lei for water - washing machine, taps, shower .....what?! charging extra for a shower?? We could do without the washing machine or the tap water, but Grant needs his shower each day So for the sake of £2, I kept quiet and paid the extra, assuming that the toilet was included in this additional price too
Once again we had arrived in time to cook dinner as the sun was going down, and the colours were absolutely beautiful. As the golden sun made it's way behind the mountains, the sky changed from pink to purple to blue, as we took unsatisfying pictures on my iphone. The mosquitos were out in droves, so as soon as we finished dinner and washed up, we were straight into the tent.
The next morning was a bit overcast; Sarah was a bit annoyed as she had wanted to go up and see the mud volcanoes the afternoon before when it was sunny and nice but Grant was too tired after the driving. But up we went on the 10 min walk, realising how much more unfit we had become living our city lives the past few weeks. We got to the top and realised neither of us had brought any cash with us! And of course the entry fee was cash only (even if it was only 4 lei or 75p per person). But we saw there was a parking lot, so told the attendant we would be back, walked back down, got the car and Sarah had her first go of driving with the trailer, up some quite steep rocky roads.
The mud volcanoes were amazing. You could walk around them and up close to them, even touching them if you so desired (Grant did, they were cold ... and muddy, funnily enough). The site was enormous, too big to walk all around in one day, and there were no real pathways, so off we went exploring, moving from one mud puddle to another, amazed at the views, the alien scenery compared to the mountains and yellow & greenery in the background; everything nearby was different shades of grey, either gloopy mud puddles or dry cracked earth.
Being able to be up so close was pretty incredible; something we realised when we drove 5 minutes to the second site where they had one big volcano and you were only allowed near it in certain conditions. This site had signs and explanations and warnings - if we had seen this site first, we would probably not have explored the other - we would totally recommend to explore the other one first (even though the second is more informative).
Minds blown, we jumped back into the car, back towards Bucharest, where we would find a campsite that would be a decent drive to the mechanics in the morning. We had found an issue with the airbags that the mechanics installed which annoyingly meant we needed to go back to get them fixed.
We found one about 45 mins drive away, it was fairly empty (a few GB plated caravans with occupants no where to be seen - weird??) and lots of wild puppies to keep Sarah entertained.
We will write a separate post on the mechanical side of things later, but once we had been to the mechanics (which was of course took longer than we expected and we ended up having a nice warm soupy lunch nearby, tripe again for Grant, creamy mushroom for Sarah - it's starting to get a bit cold!), we decided to head to Bulgaria. There is so much more of Romania that we want to see, but time (and weather) is getting away from us and we want more sun!