King of the Castles

Getting to sleep was a bit difficult last night because Adam had the hiccups for what must have been a solid two hours. I tried scaring him didn’t work. I even surprise attacked him like in Cato in The Pink Panther but he didn’t appreciate that too much. In the end I just slept through it.

We woke up early to start our big day, had breakfast and then headed to the car that we had dumped in a car park a mere 36 hours earlier. The charge was 8 Lei per hour, so 288 Lei or if you had lost your ticket it was 100 Lei which was such a coincidence because I just couldn’t find that damn ticket anywhere. Oh well. 100 Lei it was.

We set off towards our first destination. Once we were out of the city I had gotten used to driving. Apparently I clipped the wing mirror and didn’t even notice. As we got further out Adam noted it looked like the place there would be horses and carts. I asked if it was because there was a horse and cart at the side of the car. Apparently he hadn’t actually seen that at the time. There was still a bit of traffic. One man even stopped traffic to do a wee in front of his lorry. Absolutely no shame.

We eventually reached Peleş Castle and wow what a sight. Such a beautiful building both outside and in.

It strikes me that some people might have never left the house before though. One guy was fiddling with bits of the wall and another guy was recording the entire walk through on his phone. When is he going to watch that? My favourite bit was when we were waiting to go in and a toddler had a jumper on that said ‘Born to be a skate.’ Great translation there.

We came out of the castle and headed towards the smaller Pelisor Castle which isn’t really a castle but more of a big house. We just looked at the outside of that

On the way to the big house, Adam bought a little tiny basket of berries from a woman that he keeps referring to as enchanted berries. He did look quite sweet walking along with his little basket through the forest. Shame his hoody wasn’t red.

Next we went to the ‘view point’ for the castle which did give some incredible views. Once you’d walked 10 minutes through the tat stalls!

There was a monastery close by but we couldn’t go in because Adam was dressed indecently.

Next on the Transylvania tour was Bran Castle or Dracula’s Castle. However, on the way we saw a HUGE sign for Nevermore Academy, the place where Wednesday was filmed. So of course we took a little detour. We didn’t go in because you had to pay and we were tight on time but that was quite cool to see.

We reached Dracula’s Castle and it is quite impressed. Very old. Very difficult to manoeuvre around. One staircase was so steep and narrow I thought I was going to get wedged. I also injured myself on a medieval door. I was a little disappointed in the lack of Vlad the Impaler information there. Turns out he never went there. I got mixed up. Ah well. At least I saw Dracula’s castle. Oh and did I mention I dressed for the occasion? Of course!

By now I was absolutely knackered and looking forward to getting to the hotel even if it meant having to drive over a very rickety bridge to get there. There was also the matter of parking to contend with. I dropped Adam off with the luggage and the receptionist said there was parking just beyond the roundabout. I tried to park there but a car kept beeping at me and wouldn’t let me reverse into the space. I didn’t move so he got out of the car and said ‘I want to park in this space’ and I said ‘I want to park in this space.’ To which he replied its residents only. I tried to argue with him. I don’t really know why. I lost. There was a sign that said residents only. I eventually just huffed and said fine and drove off. I found somewhere else. It’s not cheap but it’ll do.

We went for a burger and retired. We are staying in Brasov tonight. Or the Hollywood of Europe. No seriously….