Sunday, August 10, 2025
Do you remember that commercial with Ricardo Mantelbahn with rich Carpathian something? Since we have been in the Carpathian mountains today, my brain has been trying to do a clip of it. Ricardo is dressed as Khan (definitely wasn’t in the commercial, but…) and he is saying rich Carpathian… and I can’t finish it. I tried oak over and over but it wasn’t right. Leather? No, not right. Keith mentioned Vigo the Carpathian (Ghostbusters) and I suddenly realized it was Corinthian leather! So, nevermind. Nothing to do with today.
We are on a 13-hour tour. I’m writing this on 3.5-hour trip back. We are in a 20-person little bus. It has been said of our driver Peter that if a road is right and curvy, he wants to be there. We have been on the curviest road of ever, and Peter is not afraid to pass slower cars during the few passing zones. We passed 4 cars at once on one piece of straight road. On our way, we saw cars in the southbound lane stopped (or super slow) forever. Once I decided it was the most cars ever, I started counting. I got to 500 cars and switched to minutes. We are now in that southbound disaster. Apparently this is Sunday coming-home-from-the-cabin traffic. I would ALWAYS take Monday off. ALWAYS.
I just saw a donkey hooked to a cart full of wood in someone’s yard.
Huh
We saw a woman with a cow next to the road not too long ago.
Anyway, we started at Peles Castle this morning…oh, no. I forgot about the French people. We got on the bus this morning and I said good morning to the couple already seated. They did not break from their phones. Eventually we all figured out that they don’t speak any English, only French. This tour doesn’t include tickets to the castles and was explicit that we have to buy certain tickets in advance. They did not. They are timed tickets and are not available today. The French people were not really interested in saying it was their fault they were on an English tour without tickets, but they definitely were. Laura, our guide, did her best to calm them down, but it was awkward for a bit. Did I mention this day together is 13 hours long?
Laura is super nice and approachable, but she is a lousy guide. We rode 2.5 hours then she got us in line for an hour tour without mentioning bathrooms. She seemed shocked that we asked for them. She took it for granted we all knew about the history of royalty in Romania, so we all kept saying, “Who’s that?” At one point, we drove away without one person. Um. That is not good. Hard to know how to tip. 🙂
Anyway, Peles (pell-ish) Castle was built by the first king, who was good and generous and died one night for no reason in 1914. He paid for the castle with his family money and left it to the people. The people wish there was still a royal family, but they had that 60 years of communism, so, not so much.
Peles is gorgeous. So much carved and inlaid wood. Since it is fairly modern, it seems both livable and holy cow fancy.
Something to note about the area. The two gift shops have books and postcards and a few (FEW) other things. They need to get a new buyer. The bread on the sammiches is awful and they need mustard in packets to help you swallow it. And three women’s bathroom stalls for the whole place is ridiculous. The group ahead of us had 75 people in it. (Not ahead for long. We passed them in the armaments room and left them in the dust. Their guide was irritated. C’mon lady! Your group is too big) Imagine their bathroom break.
Next up was Bran Castle – Dracula’s house. Laura said she would tell us all about it, since she wasn’t allowed in as a guide. She did not. We later learned that Vlad the Impaler was mean, but a good ruler in defending Transylvania. He never lived at Bran Castle and Bram Stoker just set his story there because it has a lot of fog.
(No fog today. Low humidity, so the shade was pleasant. Our bus was Arctic and I LOVED every second) I still wanted Bran Castle Transylvania shirt, but there was no time.
No time because we waited 20 minutes for a guy to fill the guy in front of us’ order. Service people around here do not speak English, so we got ready by choosing some thing we could point at. It was two thin sausage on terrible bread, covered with French fries, mustard, and mayo. So much of it.
Oh, I forgot about Bran Castle. It was 500 years older than Peles and not as pretty. They had some ridiculous “scariness” in the attic rooms. Silliness.
On to an old town (Bravo or something). Brașov. Beautiful. Lots of restaurants. The only shop we found we wanted to go in was closed. We definitely would have gotten a music box with a little train (TRAIN!)
Currency is the RON or LEI. They are the same. Why? Nobody knows. Divide the price by 4 to get dollars. It is still super weird when a bottle of soda is 10 LEI. I keep thinking I am not THAT thirsty. The sun does try to incinerate your skin when it touches you.
Gorgeous photos! I’m laughing, though, because I, too, have had a Ricardo Montalban memory shanghaied by the word “Carpathian.” When we bought our grandfather clock 30-something years ago, the salesperson told us the pretty patterned wood in some spots was “burled Carpathian elm.” In my mind, that kept turning into both “rich Carpathian elm” and “burled Carpathian leather.” I’m pretty sure neither of those phrases means anything. I laughed again when the first definition of “burled” that popped up on Google just now said, “Burled is an adjective describing something . . . that has burls.” AI is a hoot.
I definitely must know about your burled Carpathian elm because I thought about burled Carpathian wood all day!