Disney proudly presents
Trip Start
Aug 27, 2011
1
5
14
Trip End
Sep 09, 2011
Where I stayed
Ladespani
What I did
Rasnov Castle
Str Storii
St Nicholas' Cathedral
Bran, Transylvania, Romania
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Ever seen that Hollywood sign above Los Angeles? They must have learned that from the Romanians, because Rasnov has one of its own, no joke. Rasnov is also old, even older as it is said to be built a century earlier than Bran. Or perhaps I should say "it was", as there isn't much of a castle nowadays. When you arrive at the parking, the first thing you will notice is the enormous parking (200 cars...?) with only a few places taken. We knew it was lunch time, so were very happy that we were able to get away from the crowds that obviously have to be here the other parts of the day. Then we paid a few Euro for the tourist train to get to the top of the hill, as we read that the journey takes about 30 minutes. In fact, the train was slower than we would have been and it turned out that the path had no more than 1000 meters or so. We did however compensated this wrong choice with some fresh raspberries sold there. Coming through the gate the fortress was nowhere to be seen though. While the restorations are taking place, they still have a long way to go. You could even say that they have just started. That was a huge disappointment all the way.
Since we did not have a chance to explore Brasov properly the first time around, after some rest at La Despani, we drove again to the city center (our house was a good 45 minutes walk). We took a moment to look at the Black Church, which is the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul. It was closed though, so we caught a glimpse of one of the narrowest streets in Europe - Str Storii (photo attached) and went south into the Schei District. St Nicholas' Cathedral that stands there was also closed (did I say that we embarked on this trip in the evening?), but we saw some nice wall paintings outside (just a teaser of what was waiting for us a couple of days later). The rest of the day we spent resting in our garden and enjoying a surprisingly warm weather (I will add here that it rained only ONCE throughout the whole trip to Romania).
