SINAIA, ROMANIA
2016-01-29, 22:46, JASON
A popular trip lots of travelers do while in Bucharest is to do a day trip in Sinaia. It's actually a place people go to to do some skiing and summer vacationing, and it's known to be a good resort area.
Re: the natural landscape, I'd say Sinaia has the prettiest one. We went just in time for fall and so the forests were changing color. It had that ski-chalet city vibe, but decked out with some Romanian style architecture I've never seen before. It's slightly Russian inspired, and the fact that it's tucked away in the mountains makes it that much cooler. There are a lot of good places to go hiking, and a lot of castles to see. Actually, one main castle, but it's stunning.
We get in in the morning, and go to the tourist booth to get a map of the place. We start hiking and come across a small Buddhist monastery, and the place is just dead quiet without tourists. Kind of gives you a good idea about what the actual lifestyle is like. Everything's at peace.
Spending a few moments at the monastery and taking a look at the chapels, we decide to get some bread and eat it along the way like we always do. Our next stop was Peles Castle. This is the main attraction in Sinaia: it used to be a residence summer house, but it has kind of this weird Gothic style to it. Of course, none of that super old school stuff so of course it was filled with heating and what not. But, the outside was probably the most stunning castle and unique one I've seen thus far. You gotta see the pics to get what I mean.
Probably one of *the* funniest tourist guides we ever had led the one in the castle. After devouring our made sandwiches, we join the English tour for some info on the castle. This lady clearly didn't have a strong command of English, which is fine, I mean, it's almost like... we're in another country?? But, the best part was her tour was led in this pseudo-robotic voice, derived from the fact that she had memorized the entire tour and was reciting it formally. So, she would say, "Hello, everyone. We are now heading into the room of armors. This room is xxxxx and was designed for xxx." Pretty much, reading off a museum placard. The best part was she had a smile on the whole time too. Just :-D'ing nonstop and speaking robotically.. I think I got it on film.
Another funny part was was that the tour was done room-by-room. So, you start off in the hall, talk talk talk, then move on to the army room. We were in the army room, in the middle of her description, when this other tour guide behind her flung the doors open to the armor room and whispered something into her ear. With that sustained smile, she looked at us, cut herself off mid-sentence, then proceeded to say, "Okay, and nowwwwww, ladies and gentlemen..... we are heading into the dining roommmmm............" Then she does this creepy smile and gesture. I don't know, Thorin and I can't help ourselves but start cracking up. Not at her English ability, just at the forced nature of the whole thing. She also made a couple of jokes: from the dining room to the ballroom, she has to segue her speech so there's a smooth transition. So, she says this pretty much verbatim, *without* any pauses: "And now... ladies and gentlemen... we are now going into the ballroom men a challenge do you care to dance????" as she gradually slides into the next room. We. Are. In.... tears!!! So much so that the majority of this post is just about this incident!
After Peles Castle, we walk over to Pelisor Castle, but it was closed. It has a tudor exterior, which is very English and reflects that in the architecture. So, we just appreciated that sucka from the outside (which, arguably is the more exciting part anyway):
Afterwards, we just begin snaking up to this lift that they keep talking about. Apparently, there's a scenic lift that takes you to the top of the hill (Sinaia is situated kind of on a mountain) for a good vantage point. Knowing your favorite cheap asses, us, we decided to just walk up the mountain and get the view as we went up. The walk was beautiful, quiet, and relaxing. Lots of leaves, etc. But, we finally make it to the top and find out what they were talking about the whole time was an actual ski lift, and it was closed because it hadn't snowed yet. Still, it was a walk to remember, if we want to call it that.
On the way down, one stray dog starts following us and just keeps its distance. We ignore it and hope it goes away, but it doesn't, so we keep walking. Then, it's joined by another dog that begins to follow us. These rascals pop out of the random foliage: you'll hear some rustle in a pile of leaves in the forest and out comes this feral dog. One or two is fine, but by the time we make it to about .5 km from the main town at the bottom, we're like being followed by 5 dogs. We read to be weary of dogs that travel in packs since they may gang up and actually go for you. Freaking out a bit at this point, Thorin and I speed up a bit to get to the main city bit. These dogs are ruthless, they're still following us. But, luckily, in the end nothing happens. We hit town and the dogs scatter like dem bitches dey is. Phew, another crisis averted. Actually, I wish most of life's problems can be resolved that way: just running into town and having them scatter. Humans are so much more complicated than dogs..
On the way down from the city, we catch some other cool sights. The city has that cool deciduous forest look ging on. I'd say we'd definitely come back in a different time of year to get an experience of that ski lift to the top of the mountain. With haste, we went back to the train station and went back down to Bucharest to catch our bus to Chisinau. I think that was a super successful trip.