In October, I took all three kids to Romania for five days during the Columbus Day holiday. Chris wasn’t with us on this trip and we missed him terribly, but we managed to avoid any serious mishaps. Our adventures included Brasov, Peles Castle and snow-seeking in Sinaia, DinoPark in Rasnov, Bran Castle and Therme Spa. I can’t recommend visiting Romania in October highly enough! The autumn colors were UNREAL. 

OCTOBER IN TRANSYLVANIA WITH KIDS

The scene: We are at the entrance gates of gorgeous Peles Castle, our top destination when we (I) first planned on visiting Romania. We’ve been technically on the expansive property for more than an hour, but have been forced to turn back twice, first for my debit card (didn’t realize tickets were cash-only until we walked the 100 years from the car to the gate) and then a bathroom (a kid who shall remain nameless but who obstinately refused to use the bathroom the first time we stopped for THAT EXACT PURPOSE until we’d walked that 100 years almost entirely again …. needed the bathroom). We haven’t even walked into our first destination of the day and my Fitbit already records about 8,000 steps.

AND THEN.

The ticket woman has the kindness/nerve to tell me she wasn’t going to charge me for Fiona, so the ticket price is equal to the cash I’d already had in my pocket before the debit-card dash. Five seconds later, we walk through the gate and there is a bathroom literally steps away.

MOCKING ME.

This is perhaps the most aggrieved I’ve ever been by either a deal or a convenient bathroom. But I can say without exaggeration that I was SORELY AGGREVIED.

Naturally, both big kids found this terrible funny. And that, my friends, is how you know that kids are jerks.

But, we’ll back up a bit here.

The basics: I have wanted to visit Romania for years now, but something (coughcoughFUCKINGPANDEMICcoughcough) has always kept us from being able to go. I’ve been determined to go in October for some time now because Transylvania plus October equals spooky season perfection. This year, however, things got a little complicated because my husband needed to go back to the states to visit family that week. Ultimately, however, I decided to take the kids and go myself.

Why go to Romania with the kids by myself? 

A few reasons.

1. I just really wanted to go to Romania! Chris, having already been there for work a few years ago, did not share my enthusiasm for this project.
2. Knowing that we would be leaving Sicily soon meant I couldn’t imagine a scenario, short of living abroad again, where I’d be in the position to go to Romania any time in the near future. Especially not for the roughly 30 euro per ticket I paid. 
3. I wanted to remember that I can travel on my own. When I was 21, I spent almost two months traveling on my own through the Middle East and Asia mostly alone. These days, I rarely even bring my wallet when we’re walking around a place because I can just make Chris hold my ID and cards in his. While certainly I know I’m perfectly capable of taking the kids on various outings alone, I thought it might be nice to remind myself that I am capable of traveling alone.

So, how did we spend our time? A brief look at our itinerary, before I delve into all the specifics:

5 days in Transylvania with kids, an itinerary

Friday:  Arrival in Transylvania, arduous journey through customs, two-hour drive to Brasov, dinner.

Saturday: Le Bistrot breakfast, walking tour of Brasov, failed cable-car attempt, dinner at Le Ceaun

Sunday: Peles Castle, an epic berry quest, seeking snow in the mountain near Sinaia

Monday: Dino Park Rasnov, covid tests, buying all the things at Auchan

Tuesday: Bran Castle, Therme Spa, hotel for a very early morning flight from Bucharest

How we got there: We flew on WizzAir to Bucharest on Friday to Wednesday. WizzAir tends to get a bad rap, but I’ve always had a pretty solid experience with them. I was originally scheduled to return to Catania on Tuesday via BlueAir, but they cancelled my flight (side note: definitely don’t book BlueAir). I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to fly home earlier, later or from a different airport, but ended up settling on the very early Wednesday flight. I will say the airport ended up being a fairly trying experience because I hadn’t remembered that Romania was not in the Schengen zone and we had to go through customs in both Catania and Romania. It was … not fun. Especially because for this trip, I opted to carry-on luggage only and since I expected it to be cold, we were all wearing or carrying our very heavy coats. The most charitable description I can come up with for that particular aspect of the trip was “suboptimal.”

How we got around: Despite flying into Bucharest, we didn’t explore the city at all. We rented a car from KlassyWagen, which picked us up and shuttled us to the rental place. From there I got (I thought) suckered into paying for extra insurance, which I never do, mainly because I was warned that I’d get charged if I didn’t bring the car back clean. Given that a) the kids immediately exploded a bag of chips all over the backseat and b) on Day 4 the rearview mirror just FELL OFF with no provocation, this turned out to be a wise decision.

A note about car travel: I highly recommend getting an audiobook to listen to if you have to drive for a while. My kids tend to argue a lot when they are trapped in one row together (I’m too cheap to rent vans), but audiobooks help. 

Where we stayed: Guys. GUYS. We stayed in one of my all-time favorite AirBnBs. It was seriously a highlight of the trip just hanging out in this apartment. The entire back wall was made of windows and the view was INCREDIBLE. The bedrooms even had glass sliders rather than traditional doors, just so you could wake up to the view. It was amazing and we absolutely loved it.

Day one: Arrive in Brasov 

Highlights: survival, amazing apartment, dinner 

I will not rehash how crappy our airport experience was because I’m still trying hard to block it out. But after getting our rental car, I will say it ended up being a very pretty drive to Brasov, the town we used as our base for four nights. Brasov is about 2.5 hours north of Bucharest, and it was a mercifully peaceful drive.

Our original plan involved stopping at Peles Castles en route, but since we lost so much time dealing with customs, we ultimately decided to just press on to Brasov and get to our apartment. I’ve already gushed about how gorgeous the place was, but on top of that it was also pretty conveniently located (other than being at the top of a rather large hill) for the city center. We walked into town and had an excellent dinner at Next Door.

All four of us enjoyed our meals, so this one got a gold star from us. And then it was home for some more good old-fashioned sibling bonding time.

Day two: the sights of Brasov

Highlights: a walking tour, a failed cable-car attempt and a park 

Saturday began with an early effort to bribe the kids into having a good attitude about one of their (well, Owen’s, mostly) least favorite activities: a walking tour. They always complain about tours, but about 50 percent of the time they end up enjoying themselves, especially if the guide is good.

So the bribe: a visit to Le Birou Bistrot, an amazing breakfast place. As you can imagine, based on this picture ….

It went over well with the crowd. Lochlan got the same pancakes as Owen (so so messy), while Fiona and I each opted for savory options.

I booked a free walking tour with Diane from GuruWalk, and I highly recommend the experience. I expected to just see the city, but we started out with a walk through a forested area that is amazingly close to the city center and enjoyed hearing stories about the bears (bears!) that have been spotted in the area. Getting to be in the forest was a high point for Owen and Fiona, which helped power us through to the end of the tour.

We saw the Black Tower and White Tower (old city watch towers) and heard about some of the history of those, as well as a general history of Romania. I’ve never done much research on Romania, so I found the whole thing pretty fascinating.

Once we made it back into the city, we saw a bunch of other famous must-see spots in Brasov, including the extremely narrow Rope Street (created as an access point for firefighters to get into the walled part of the city), Catherine’s Gate, the Black Church and the Market Square.

After our tour, a quick lunch at chip shop Cartofisserie (recommend, especially the spicy chicken), we made a last minute decision to try to take the cable cars to the iconic Hollywood-style Brasov sign. However, the website schedule we looked at was incorrect and we ended up missing the final opportunity to go up that day. An overtired Fiona was fairly devastated, but a long stop at a nearby park cheered her right up. 

We finished up our evening with traditional Romanian food for dinner at La Ceaun, which came highly recommended and was great for me but didn’t offer a lot of options for the kids (who insisted on sitting outside purely so they could use the provided blankets).

Unfortunately, this restaurant proved to be the scene of a CRIME. Owen and Fiona had been carrying around their ‘walking sticks’ since the previous evening, and even hid them carefully during our walking tour so we could return to collect them. During dinner they had stashed them again, only to find they’d been ROBBED. Either by some other kid who knows a good walking stick when he/she sees it, or by some adult who clearly doesn’t. Either way: dastardly.

Day Three: The Christmas Prince’s castle and SNOW 

Highlights: Peles Castle, a cable car to snowtops in Sinaia

A visit to the famous Peles Castle was high on the list for both me (because its a famous landmark and because I’m slightly obsessed with castles) and Fiona (because she saw it in The Christmas Prince series on Netflix). Peles is located near Sinaia, and only took us about an hour to drive to from Brasov.

Also, on that drive I SWEAR that I saw a dead bear on the side of the road, with a couple cops gathered around it. I thought perhaps that I was crazy, but it turns out that bears getting hit by cars in Romania is very, very much a thing. So, I’m calling it: we (I) saw a bear in Romania. 

I won’t rehash the adventure of trying to get into the place, as detailed at the beginning of this post, but I will say it was worth all the early aggravation. Construction on Peles Castle began in 1873 at the behest of King Carol I — he fell in love with the area’s gorgeous mountain scenery — and was completed in 1914. Peles was the first palace in the world to be fully powered by electricity produced locally. Various members of the royal family lived there until the abdication of King Michael I, after which the Communist leadership confiscated all royal property, including Peles. In 2007, the castle was returned to the royal family, which subsequently leased it back to the Romanian government. It gets 250,000 to 500,000 visitors each year.

The castle was very cool on the inside (Owen particularly liked a room just absolutely covered with weapons), but the grounds were everyone’s favorite. We ended up on a bit of an epic quest once again after leaving, because during one of our MANY attempts to go into the castle we’d run into an older lady selling the most beautiful baskets of berries. The kids desperately wanted them right then, but since we were still trying to get into the place I told them we’d have to buy them after. The kids promised this woman they’d be back, so when she wasn’t where they left her when we got out of the castle they were extremely worried about breaking their promise. So, off we roamed for at least a couple of miles around the property, sure she must be around the next bend.

Having covered every inch of the property, we were just about to despair of every finding our berry lady and were literally headed toward the exit, when who does Fiona spot?!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Next it was into town for lunch (me being unwilling to survive only on berries, unlike the kids) and discussion of what to do next. I was somewhat inclined to just head back to Brasov, but having promised the big kids snow, snow we had to have. We were surprised to find that our lunch restaurant (coincidentally named Snow, Swiss food, delightful) was quite close to a cable car, albeit not the one we originally researched. We determined that we could make one of the last cars up, but only if we made a mad dash back to the car for the rest of our winter apparel. From the amount of complaining the kids initially did when we had to walk from the car to the restaurant, you’ll think this was a problem but with snow on the line? NOPE.

We took the cable car to the highest point we could, 2000 meters up. It was really too warm for snow anywhere but here, where we were lucky it hadn’t all managed to melt yet in the 9 Celsius weather. Lochlan fell asleep in the carrier on the ride up and my back was in agony, so I mostly walked around while the big kids frolicked.

The views were fantastic! 

I spent a considerable amount of time being terrified that we’d somehow miss the last cable car down and have to walk down somehow, but while I kept waiting for a trademark Husk “incident,” it seemed that wasn’t going to be. Once we were safely on the cable car down, I could appreciate how gorgeous it was much better.

It was a pleasant drive back to Brasov, although upon arrival I remembered a major flaw in the one-parent trip: they really do have to go freaking everywhere with you. Since I had not yet figured out the food delivery thing (because idiot), we had to go back out to forage for food (Subway for them, Thai noodles for me) and climb the epic hill back to our apartment afterward. Normally, Chris and I tend to divide and conquer after busy days: one of us (Chris) stays with the kids and the other (me) goes our foraging for food. Without Chris, we all had to be along for the ride. Never have I so regretted it not being the 90s, so I could not just leave Owen and Fiona in charge and go on my merry way.

Day four: Dinosaurs and nasal swabs

Today’s agenda was supposed to include Bran Castle, Rasnov Fortress and the Rasnov Dino Park, but once again, that pesky virus (remember the virus?) intervened. Jerk.

At the time of this trip, Italy required covid tests for any unvaccinated person older than 6 years old arriving in the country by plane. (Though in a shocking number of cases, this was no checked but …. still). So, a fair chunk of today got eaten up by locating a testing location 20 minutes away, driving there, realizing we needed passports and returning home to grab them, then finding out we’d have to be at 330 p.m. for the tests themselves. Whoops.

(Also Auchan. Oh, Auchan, how I miss you. A year or two ago, Auchan pulled out of Italy, so when we saw it en route we had to stop and buy a bunch of random items).

Anyway, we ended up prioritizing going to the Rasnov Dino Park. Quite a few parts of it were closed due to social distancing requirements, but the park itself was very cute. I’d say the main part of the park is the dozens of dinosaur statues you can find all over the park and especially through a walking trail through the woods. Some of them even move, which all of us except Lochie thought was neat (“too scawy,” say the Loch Ness Monster). 

Certain aspects of the park, such as a high-ropes course and various craft areas, were unfortunately closed. Major bummer. But we were able to play on a lot of playground equipment, some slides and see a 4D movie that included dinosaurs flying through our heads (also deemed somewhat “too scawy”).

All in all, I’d say a visit is worth it if you have little kids — and probably more so in warmer weather and non-Covid times. An FYI about parking: there is a lot in the front, and you can pay to take a little shuttle bus up to the park. You’ll need cash for this.

After the park, our day concluded with getting the covid tests (not the easiest ones we’ve had, but better than ones we had done in France), a strange, awkward pizza meal in an empty restaurant, and driving back to the house. I also got talked into finally visiting a park relatively close to our apartment, which turned out to be a great spot. Per usual with European parks, this one had many more opportunities to get hurt and thus was dramatically more fun than most American parks.

Day five: (Not) Dracula’s castle and a spa day

Tuesday morning saw us bid farewell to the glorious apartment (SOB). If BlueAir hadn’t cancelled our return flight a week before, completely messing up our original plan, we would have driven straight to the airport from here. However, BlueAir’s nonsense ended up working out in our favor because it allowed us time to hit some sights we missed as a result of customs delays on day 1 and covid test delays on day 4. Go figure!

With our newly available time, we took a second shot at driving to Bran Castle. To my surprise, we found it didn’t add much time to driving time at all, despite not initially looking to be “on the way.”

So, Bran Castle. This place is often described as “Dracula’s Castle,” but basically this seems to have been a marketing ploy come up with by the former Communist government for tourism. It does not resemble the castle described by Bram Stoker in Dracula, and it does not have much of a connection with the historical figure on whom Dracula is based, Vlad Tepes.

Inside, the castle is mostly dedicated to Queen Marie, a British-born princess who became the last Queen of Romania. (Fun fact, she turned down a proposal from the future George V of Great Britain). Queen Marie was devoted to restoring Bran Castle, and now much of the castle describes her life and accomplishments, and those of her children. While there are a few bummers in there for sure — her son’s abdication and then surprising usurpation of the throne — Maria seems to have been the driving force behind Romania entering WWI on the side of the Allies. She also was known for serving as a nurse throughout the war and being heavily involved with the Red Cross.

Queen Maria was heavily slandered after the fall of the Romanian monarchy, but seems to have been a fascinating historical figure known for her extensive writing (she wrote 34 books and short stories during her lifetime), her beauty, her horsemanship and her political instincts. I’m looking forward to learning more about her and her children when time allows. Random fun fact I did stumble upon: one of Maria’s grandchildren, the deposed King of Yugoslavia, ended his life in exile not far from where I grew up. King Peter II was buried in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1970. He was the only European monarch ever buried on American soil until he was exhumed and returned to Serbia in 2013. ,l

We ended up buying hilariously cheap souvenirs at a market at the base of the castle, followed by a low-key lunch in the town of Bran. I would not have minded the opportunity to explore more, but since we had more than a two-hour drive ahead of us, I knew it was time to press on.

Our final stop had originally been intended as a surprise for the kids, but I couldn’t help myself and ended up telling them before we even left. Well done, Kasey, well done. Fortunately, it did end up living up to my expectation.

THERME SPA. 

I have massive regrets about not getting any photos of this place, because it was one of our favorite places and the perfect way to cap off the trip. It is an enormous indoor spa/wellness center with three different “zones,” two of which are reserved for adults-only.  You can find lots of saunas and massages and other spa treatments in those areas, plus pools and hot tubs and plenty more I’m sure. In the family-friendly area though? WHOA. Even better.

We’re talking numerous slides, a giant pool and — my personal favorite — a huge indoor/outdoor HOT TUB.  The only slight hiccup was that Fiona was very offended she wasn’t tall enough to go on every slide, while Owen was. Sorry, kiddo. 

The entire building appears to be a gigantic indoor greenhouse. The walls are mostly glass and there are tons of plants everywhere, and it is very warm. The kids (ok, and I) were very impressed with the locker rooms because each person is fitted with a band when they come in, which opens and closes the lockers as needed. Nothing to carry, nothing to keep track of. (And no way of losing your phone, which has your plan tickets, covid test results, directions to hotel and airport, way of contacting the shuttle at the airport and oh, just EVERYTHING? Also no way of taking pictures though, hence the stock photos)

Fortunately for us, it was also open quite late. We didn’t arrive until about 5 p.m., and ended up staying until a little 8. Therme is very close to both the airport and our hotel, so it was a quick jaunt (and brief period when we couldn’t get the gate open) to get back to bed.

Since our flight the next morning was at 6 a.m. (ugh), that about did it for this trip!

Overall, I’m extremely happy that we went, even though we did miss Chris very much. We didn’t end up having any major “incidents” like car trouble or getting lost or stuck on a mountain top (my top three fears, not in that order), and overall we managed to have a lot of fun. So, now I will just leave you with a few random extra photos.