Day 3 Touring Romania

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Here is today's tour description: Day 3: Sibiu - Sighisoara - Bistrita We have breakfast and depart to Biertan fortified church, famous for its divorce prison room and later we will arrive in Sighisoara (Unesco) , the city where Vlad Tepes (The Impaler) was born. We will visit the Unesco citadel and then go to Bistrita through the beautiful city of Targu Mures which we visit shortly. Overnight in Hotel Coroana de Aur 4* where stayed also Jonathan Harker from the novel of Bram Stoker in Bistrita.

Spoiler alert: I am assuming that last sentence is Romanian humor because while the names Golden Crown are similar, the hotel we are in tonight was built by the Communist regime and could not have been standing here when fictional Jonathan Harker stayed. 

We set out around 9 am after breakfast and checkout. I have forgotten to note that when we left Ukraine and enter Romania everyone spoke English again. I am reminded because trying to get ice at breakfast, I encountered my first local who wasn't fluent in English at all. The people we encountered on our Monday tour to Bulgaria also all spoke English. 

Our 1st stop today was the fortified church at Biertan. It was not the 1st one we saw this morning on our drive. We paid 10 lei pp to enter. This also served as our morning potty break. It was a tough walk over river stone pavements and steep slopes. There were beautiful mountain vistas all day today including from here. The most interesting thing was a room off to the left of the church's altar and it was a lock on an old door because it used to serve as a treasury. The other interesting thing was the divorce prison outside the church.

Next stop was Sighisoara with an entire old town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I think we walked the entire old town on cobbled streets after climbing the hill to get there. We did stop for lunch mid-way. I still got a sunburn today! It was a special place but a really hard walk. We ate lunch at Casa Vlad Dracul in the actual house where Vlad (basis for fictional Dracula) was born. It was good food too. I ordered bean soup in a bread bowl and Clay ordered tochitura, a Romanian pork sausage stew over mamaliga, and we switched mid-way. 

After lunch we drove to Targu Mures, a city known for an area of Secessionist architecture. We walked for far too long to see too little. The best example was 1 huge building, the Palace of Culture, and the street-dividing plaza along the stretch we walked was made to have been driven down & back to see the buildings. I guess an architect might have wanted more time there, but...

Last potty stop was a gas station in Reghin. New map pin.

We arrived in Bistrita at about 5 pm for rush hour and to find the road beside our hotel was closed. So it was about an hour before we got checked in to Hotel Coroana de Aur. Vlad suggested a place across the roundabout from the hotel. We looked it up on the Internet and couldn't find a menu nor could we find any where else as close to eat. Google said Rapsodie was open so we went. It was closed. There is a small nice looking building that looks like it is built in the hotel's lawn at the corner, it had a huge umbrella covered terrace of outdoor seating and it was clearly open when we walked by. It had no name that we ever saw and it isn't shown on Google maps. Our receipt for our meal has no name! It wasn't great but it was convenient for a quick dinner about 7 pm. Evidently a Lutheran church is the only site of interest in Bistrita and we weren't curious enough to walk there.

We asked for ice at the front desk when we returned. They sent us to the hotel's restaurant which appeared to be close behind the 7 to midnight sign. They told us to open the closed doors and ask. The only light was coming from the kitchen so we waited outside it. Eventually a woman came by. We'd seen a table of men out on the hotel's terrace with a silver bucket of ice so Clay asked for a bucket of ice. She said sure and came back and handed him a plastic grocery sack full of ice! Cold drinks tonight!

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