Monday, August 11, 2025
We took a regular sized bus to the Transfăgărășan highway – the world’s best road, according to Top Gear magazine. It was built by Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1970s so his army had a route to Transylvania from Bucharest that the USSR wouldn’t see coming. I guess they didn;t have sattelites that told them what everyone had for breakfast back then.
Our guide today was Stefan. His English is very good because all TV and radio when he was little (born in 1989) (Hi TB) was just straight from the United States – learn English or have no fun. He gave us a good explanation of the day as we started out (ending every sentence with “guys”) (really grating) (to me. Keith did not notice) – two hours until gas station for restroom break, 2.5 hours to lunch at the peak (2040 m of elevation), reverse, same road, back to same gas station, back to Bucharest.
HEY! It’s pronounced byoo-car-est! I tested it out today and yesterday – checking with the locals. Who knew? Not me. BYOOOO-car-est.
Other than that, he didn’t talk to us. He said go to sleep until we stop. He whispered everyone awake a few miles before the gas station. He was such a better guide than Laura. Poor Laura.
We were seated right in the middle of the bus, one seat forward of the back door. When we were on the bus tour last summer with the band, we tried and tried to get the people from the seats in front of the door (half the bus) to go out the front – every freaking time we got off the bus. They would not. The people from the center of the bus exited through the back door while everyone from the back of the bus waited until the whole front had disembarked until we could start. In addition to it being irritating to wait, it just took so much longer to get everyone off the bus. We stopped at the gas station and Keith stood up and dashed down the steps of the back door. I followed him and said, “WE just did the thing!!” He said he knew and hurried to the bathroom. I followed. There were three stalls for 30 women, so I was happy to be #4. The rest of the day, each time we got off the bus, Keith dashed away and I just stopped and waited for everyone in the back to get off. Zoooom. It went so fast. There were 3 young women taking up three bus seats right in front of us and there was no way they were going to challenge me. They did wait for me each time and were the last ones off the bus. I lied. When we got back to the gas station, I zoomed right with Keith to get in line fast. I am all for doing the right thing until it disadvantages me. Oh, sad to admit.
From the gas station into the foothills of the Făgăraș mountains (part of the Carpathian mountains), we went through almost non-stop little towns. The houses were so interesting – no two alike. A lot of them looked like Playmobile houses. House, house, playmobile house, house that collapsed, house, playmobile house, should collapse house…It was very interesting. I couldn’t get any good pictures because we were always going so fast, but that is not going to stop me from putting some here.
A lot (LOT) of houses had triangular structures made of sticks. What the heck? Then we finally saw some with drying hay. We asked Stefan and he said locals will do a cooperative with cows or other livestock, and everyone dries hay for the cows.
Many houses also had water heaters on their roofs that used the sun to heat the water.
The ad for the tour said COME AND SEE BEARS IN THE BEAR SANCTUARY!!! In tiny letters, it said Bears are wild animals and go where they want to go when they want to go. You may not see bears. I did not think we would see bears at all. We saw 8 bears. Wow. The totally sad thing is that the bears come right out to the highway because people feed them. Keith asked what people would have to feed bears after we passed 25 signs with a hand offering a bear pizza and saying NO! Don’t feed bears. Everyone likes pizza. We were able to slow down to see all but one bear. I got a picture practically over my shoulder – hurray for lucky accidents.
The road up into the mountains was gorgeous.
The road up and up and up was gorgeous.
Bâlea Lake at the top was gorgeous.
Looking over the top from the top was great fun.
Lunch was fun and delicious. Especially the potatoes.
We slept a bunch of the way home. Keith scrolled and I listened to my audio book. It was such a lovely way to see beautiful places. Afterwards, we walked down the block to see the Parliament building. I saw a cute girl filling water bottles at an actual bubbler and a tree with fluffy flowers.
We immediately napped when we got back – because bus napping put us in the mood. We walked out, looking for sandwiches, and found some for dinner.
I said I wished we had TV. Keith turned channels until we found True Crime in English. It was soooo cheezy. We watched like we’d never seen a TV before. 🙂
Hi
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