Peles Castle

We woke up to another drizzly day, but this time we hopped in the car and went exploring. We have to try and get out a little earlier, because time seems to go by so quickly when it gets dark around 5:00pm!

We were headed only about an hour south of Brasov to the town of Sinaia, and the magnificent Peles Castle.

Grocery shopping in Romania

We woke up to rain yesterday morning, so we just relaxed at the guest house. There are only four rooms here, and the basement is the common area with a nice living room and kitchen space. We've been the only ones here for two nights, although two more rooms were occupied last night.

This is a popular guesthouse, but it's low season for tourism here in Romania, so it's only been full on weekends.

A couple of funny things happened yesterday...

Yesterday morning we picked up our rental car. Our appointment was at 10:00am, and we were there five minutes ahead of time. They had booked us a 2012 Renault Clio, a small hatchback. But when the girl sat us down to do the paperwork, she apologized that the car was in service, and they were giving us a slightly bigger one, a 2013 Dacia Logan. No problem for us, we just wanted transportation.

Rental cars are priced in euros here in Romania, but when they charge your card, it is in the lei equivalent. It's tough to find anything under 25 euros ($37 CAD, $28 USD) per day, unless you are taking the car for longer than a week.

Busy day with lots of pictures in Brasov, Romania!

Our guesthouse host Daniel picked us up exactly at 10:00am from the studio apartment where we were staying at his parent's place. We drove through the old part of town to the opposite side, with Daniel pointing things out along the way.

Just before we arrived at La Despani Guesthouse, I noticed the car rental place where we have our booking for this morning. I knew it was quite close to the guesthouse, but it's almost right across the street!

Travel day!...Bucharest to Brasov

Travel days in a new country are always interesting!

You just never know exactly how things are going to go, despite planning in advance as much as you can. And of course you don't know what you're going to see along the way. Yesterday, we planned to take the train from Bucharest to Brasov, Romania a distance of about 166 kms (103 miles) by rail.

Lesson learned...

We slept in a little bit on Friday morning. Not much really, but then we kind of relaxed for a couple of hours before getting ambitious enough to get outside. It was about 10:30am by the time we left the apartment.

Oh, speaking of which, some of you had asked for pictures of where we're staying. We had booked an AirBnb rental to stay in a private room in a shared apartment in Bucharest. We got lucky in that our hosts Cosmin and Carmen are really nice and helpful people, and we will probably stay with them again when we return to Bucharest in mid December.

Exploring Bucharest, Romania

We haven't had any problem with "jet lag". But then, we rarely do. We try right away to put ourselves into the current time without thinking about what the time was when we left Canada. And so even though we had been tired the night before, we slept well and woke up just after 7:00am.

But then it took us a while to get going. We had some internet time and a cup of tea, and before we knew it it was 9:30am. Can't be wasting the day away, because there's too much to see!

Arrived in Romania!

When we left you yesterday, we were sitting in Zurich airport, waiting for our flight from Zurich to Bucharest.

The mid afternoon flight went fine, and in fact we even slept for part of it, which is not normal for us. But the previous overnight transatlantic flight and six hour time change does funny stuff to your system, so we were glad that we managed to get another hour's nap!

Hello Switzerland!

Well, we made it across the pond. A little tired, but excited to be here, so it's all good. Sitting in Zurich airport as I write this, waiting for our 11:55am flight to Bucharest.

The flight from Ottawa to Montreal was fine. I think we were only in the air for 20 minutes. You just get up there, and you start to come back down!

It's going to be a long day and a half!

But we love this stuff. The next time you hear from us, we'll be in Zurich, Switzerland. How cool is that??

We fly Air Canada from Ottawa to Montreal at 3:20 this afternoon. Then, a short wait before our 6:00pm overnight Swiss Air flight from Montreal to Zurich, Switzerland. The flight time is 7h:20m, and there's a 5 hour time change so it will be 6:20am when we arrive in Zurich.

October Expenses

Well, we obviously can't afford to keep coming back to Ottawa. Just kidding, but it does seem we spend more money sitting in one place than we do when we're traveling! It was all worth it of course...we had a fun month and it was great to see all of our Ottawa family and friends again.

We spent a total of $2,350 for the month. Definitely above average. But not one particular category was way out of whack, it's just that they were all slightly higher than normal and when you add them all up...well, they add up!

Would you take the bus, or the train?

One of the things we're going to have to decide on during our upcoming trip is whether to take the bus, or the train. If everything else is equal, we like to travel by train. We just think it's more relaxing, and you've got more space to get up and stretch your legs if you want to.

But, the train isn't always faster, and it can also be more expensive.

Busy last few days

It's been a busy couple of days for us. Trying to squeeze in some visits with family and friends while we get the chance because we're usually only in Ottawa once a year at the most. The next year will be a little different because of course we're back here at Christmas for two weeks, and then again next April.

On Friday, we went for lunch with my mother and my sister. Thanks Mom!

A little info about our next trip

Since we're going to be spending most of the month of November in the country of Romania, we figured we should give you a bit of a primer about the country itself.

Probably the first (and maybe the only) thing you might think of when asked about Romania is Dracula...and/or Transylvania. Most everybody will have heard of those two things that are closely related to Romania, and especially at this time of year, given that we're only a couple of days away from Halloween.

Shouldn't we be half way to Mexico by now?

That's what I was thinking to myself as I watched the snowflakes coming down yesterday.

They had been calling for a big rainstorm starting yesterday afternoon, but at the last minute they changed it to snow. And they called for between 3-7 cms (1-3 inches)!

Sure enough, the big wet flakes started to accumulate on the ground.