A Few Days Rest

The campsite De Oude Wilg is a quiet campsite in the centre of Romania, where we spent a few days relaxing and catching up with the washing. We normally hand wash our clothes as we go along, but the bedding is best done in a proper washing machine. Ewout’s hip was still giving trouble so on the third day in the campsite so he asked the owner if there was a doctor or a place where we could go and have it looked at. Her recommendation was to go to the hospital in Sibiu and be seen in the emergency department. She said it would only take a half to an hour wait!

Hospital visit.

It was an easy drive to the town of Sibiu and we found a carpark very near to the hospital. With the aid of Google translator we asked a security guard there where we should go and he was happy to walk us to the right place. We checked in at 12.00 and finally left at 6.00. It was an interesting experience and we left with a prescription for some tablets and told to take it easy. They didn’t examine but just asked questions. They did take blood, a drip and gave a heart a scan. The most interesting part of the afternoon was when in the waiting room area they wheeled in a body [dead] all wrapped up, left it there for a minute and then took it outside to a waiting ambulance. The old lady I was sitting next to got a bit upset with this and had to be consoled by another lady in the waiting room. We bought the tablets that were prescribed at a chemist nearby and headed back to the campsite again overnight.

Transfagarasan Highway.

This is the first time that we have put a video on the blog site. It seems to be easy to do and I am hoping that it will work. The first is us driving on the decent of the highway. The second is where we had to stop and wait for the goats, sheep and donkeys to pass.

In the morning we headed in the direction of the Transfagarasan Highway. This is a road that has been described as the best road in the world. It goes up in the mountains to the peak at 2000 meters above sea level and has many twists and turns. The best part is the scenery which is spectacular and we were lucky as the weather was clear. The “Bunyip” made it up without any problems and we had a break at the peak, going for a walk and visiting the lake Balea. Of course there were the souvenir shops, food outlets and café’s at the peak, it was good to have a break and go for a walk and take in the scenery. At the peak we did spot a large French Motorhome/Truck parked there, this motorhome we had seen near Rastov a few days earlier as we were driving. We continued travelling through the tunnel and then down the road the other side until we found a picnic spot where we decided to set up the barbeque and have lunch. While we were there we watched the procession of cars and plenty of motorbikes heading up the road.

French Family

In the middle of the afternoon as we were relaxing after the barbeque the French Motorhome/Truck stopped and to say hello. They had also seen us on the road a few days before. We took some photos and they suggested if there was a good spot up ahead that we join them overnight. They did find a nice place next to a small river and we parked up next to them, spent a pleasant evening and night them. Charles, Aurelie and their two children Lou-Ann and Anthony were doing a trip in Europe fine tuning their rig as they are going to ship it to South America later in the year to do a trip from South America right up to Alaska; they are even talking about taking to Africa and Australia. We cooked our evening meal over a campfire and enjoyed some wine and great company. In the morning we said our goodbyes, exchanges blog and email details and continued through the valley towards Bucharest.

Bucharest

As Ewout’s was not really fit enough for walking a long way we decided to take a drive to the centre of Bucharest to see the Parliament House Building. The building is supposed to be the second largest building in the world, the Pentagon being the largest. The drive through the city was interesting with car parked up to 3 abreast and blocking some driving lanes, and at times cars would go up on the tramlines and pass. We found the building easily and parked out front in a tour bus parking area. As it was later in the day the tourist buses were all gone. We walked around took some photos and headed out of town towards the border.

Last Night in Romania

We found a supermarket to use up the last of our Romanian Lev and then sought a place to park for the night in the town of Giurgiu which is the last Romanian town before the crossing into Bulgaria. The place we parked was near to a sports ground and a few of the young locals were a bit noisy, playing loud music and beeping of car horns until about midnight when they decided to go home. We had spent 20 days in Romania and it was time to explore other places, so now on to Bulgaria.

Another list

Is seems that our blog site is on another list.

http://www.joaoleitao.com/resources/top-travel-blogs/
We discovered that we are on the list of the top 2300 travel blogs. Back in May were in the top 100 travel blogs to follow in 2015. It seems that the lists are getting bigger. We have no idea how they compile these lists but it’s nice to get a little recognition for some of the work we put into the blog.

Worst Road in Romania Video.

A few weeks ago we drove along a road which was in the north of Romania and marked as a main road. It turned out to be the worst road in Romania. Our Dutch neighbors towed a caravan on this road taking them many hours. Here is the short video we took as we bounced along the road.