Once departing Sibiu, we drove to Sinaia, which is further into the Carpathian mountains, and you can see from the beautiful pictures we took along the way that it was a very pretty drive.
Sibiu is more of a tourist, ski-resort and is situated within the mountains with several winding roads up and down. I thought it was beautiful there and i think this was one of my favorite places. There was even still a little snow on the ground in some places.
We enjoyed the scenery on our way to dinner, which was at the top of a mountain and once again, we enjoyed another delicious meal.
The next day in Sibiu we had another gorgeous day and went to visit Peles Castle, which I read somewhere that this castle is one of the most beautiful castles in Europe, and they didn't lie. This castle is truly amazing!
Built in 1873, this castle used to be the Romanian royalty's summer residence and it was the final resting place for several Romanian monarchs including King
Carol I, who died here in 1914. Now it is more of a museum. We took over an hour tour inside and it was beautiful.
Before leaving Sibiu, we had a nice lunch again at the same restaurant as the night before and then we drove to Brasov.
Like Sibiu, Brasov is also a mountain resort and supposedly one of the most visited places in Translyvania. It is also the location of Bran castle, which is known as Dracula's castle.
As you can see, Brasov is avery pretty, very clean city and while our stay was short, we enjoyed walking through the it.
On our last day before traveling back to Lucian's and Raluca's parents house in Curtea de Arges, we visited Bran Castle (or Dracula's castle).
We had to climb up a hill to get there, and you can see as we got closer, something got into Lee.
Bran Castle, originally first built in 1212, was used for defense purposes mainy against the Ottoman Empire and later became a customs post. In 1920, the castle became a royal residence within the Kingdom of Romania. It became the favorite home and retreat of Queen Marie.
In 1897 Bram Stoker wrote a terrifying story about Count Dracula. Stoker's story is based on the life of Vlad Tepes/Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476), a ruler revered by Romanians for standing up to the Ottoman Empire. Known as one of the most dreadful enemies of the Turks, Vlad started organizing the state and enforcing the law by applying death penalty and impaling all those he considered enemies. The historians
nicknamed him Vlad Tepes while people say he was Count Dracula because he used
to sign with his father's name, Dracul "The Devil". Dracula is derived from the
Romanian word for devil or dragon.
His castle is supposed to be Bran's Castle since its narrow corridors constitute a mysterious labyrinth of ghostly nooks and secret chambers easy to hide a "vampire". Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad the Impaler) does not seem to have had a significant role in the history of the fortress, although he passed several times through the Bran Gorge.
On our way to Curtea de Arges, the road was not that great, very bumpy, and there was maybe one really bad part due to the heavy winter they had. Supposedly, lots of the roads in Romania are never repaired and several are definitely in need of fixing some potholes and such.
We again had lots of spectacular views on our drive that we had to stop and take photos.