Bad day made good

We walked to the nearby Sixt rental car desk located in a nearby hotel.  At the opening time of 0900, tt was unattended but we managed to ring up the number provided.  They couldn’t do us a car till around 1100.

That left us with our backup booking with Avis for 0930.  We taxied down to the Kronwell Hotel in which the Avis was located.  They needed a passport which we hadn’t brought but were happy to accept the photo of it which was in our email box.

We got assigned a nice Renault Clio manual.  I navigated Kim out of town towards the Bear Sanctuary.  The last stretch of road was gravel and we went past some shepherds and their ginormous black long-haired dogs which chased our car.  I wasn’t sure if they were playing or being vicious but I certainly wouldn’t want to be a pedestrian amongst them.

At the gate of the Bear Sanctuary, we were told it was closed.  Ooops!  I normally plan my travel beforehand with a bit more diligence and care.  This time, I was doing what normal people do, ie. decide on the day or the day before.  Yesterday, when trying to make things happen, we missed the fact that the sanctuary would be closed today.  Lesson learnt!  Stick to my tried and trusted mode of planning in advance.

As Bran Castle wasn’t open till 1200, we headed to nearby Rasnov Citadel.  It wasn’t possible to drive up so we parked and took a ride up in a tractor-towed trailer.  We could have easily walked but we were being lazy.

Rasnov Citadel wasn’t properly restored and for me, that was part of the appeal.  It felt more real rather than Disneyesque.  After a short lookaround, we returned to ground level and had lunch in a restaurant adjoining the carpark.

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Continuing to Bran Castle, it started raining more heavily.  We paid for parking then sat out the rain in a cafe before continuing into the castle which is commonly associated with Dracula.  There doesn’t seem to be any concrete association apart from the fact that the inspiration for the story came from the area.

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Exploring the inside was a squishy affair with many other people, all wet from the rain negotiating the narrow stairways.  We got it over and done with and continued back to near Brasov, then bypassing it to the town of Harman.

This was a little bit of an “extra” which we hadn’t planned on.  Harman has a fortified evangelical church from the German settlers.  The weather had cleared by now; it was very pretty with the church being surrounded by thick fortified walls which had a few rooms built in to them.  We climbed to the top of the bell tower and got back down before the hourly big bell went off.

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Looking at our map, we had time for one more fortified evangelical church at Prejmer.  We thought it would be “more of the same” but went anyway.  This turned out to be rather different.  The church was less spectacular but the construction of the walls was super thick and there were countless rooms built into them.

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With Harman and Prejmer, we felt that we had made full use of the car, even compensating for the lack of bears.  It was a bad day made good.