As we sadly left our new friends in beautiful Bucharest on Friday, we headed north, toward Ploiesti. Getting deeper and deeper into the Romanian countryside, our mouths dropped open. It was beautiful.

Part 1: It’s not Tuscany, it’s Wallachia!

Romania is not known (at least in my circles) for wine. Maybe some people who really know their stuff know the beautiful secret, but nobody has ever said to me, “you simply must try this Romanian wine, it really is grand.” 

But the climate in the Dealu Mare region is similar to the climate in Tuscany, and it gets more sun per year than all of Romania. Grapes are not the only crop here: you will also find miles and miles of corn, sunflowers (for seeds and sunflower oil) with their bright petals all facing in one direction, and lots of pasture land with sheep and cows. People live simply, and it’s not uncommon to get stuck behind a horse pulling a wagon with high, skinny wheels for collecting crops, and of course a farmer riding the wagon. 

There are little Romanian grandmothers in headscarves walking down the street around the horse droppings, and rows of cyprus trees that shoot up to the sun from the flat, fertile land. We stopped at an active Eastern Orthodox graveyard with some graves waiting for family members to join them. The church next door appeared to be in a permanent state of repair. The graves all faced more farmland, a nice place to be buried.

After about an hour of driving, we pulled up to Vinalia, a bed and breakfast on a vineyard whose owners make wine as a hobby; not commercially. You can’t buy their wine anywhere else but here. And the pictures cannot do justice to the place. 

Before our evening wine tasting though, we headed to the Bellu Manor, built in the old Romanian architectural style which I talked about a bit in the post on Bucharest: a combination of Turkish (often visible in the building’s arches), art nouveau, and often high roofs. The mansion was built in the late 19th century and belonged to Alexandru Bellu, an art collector and photographer whose family had moved to Bucharest from Macedonia. The main material for his photography were Romanian women in traditional dress (but I wasn’t allowed to take a picture). His house had many treasures, including a room for hookah and Turkish guests with lots of pillows and prayer rugs hanging on the walls, and a “far East” room with paintings and artifacts from Japan and China. But the highlight for Seth and me was a still-functioning gramophone!

We toured the house and the gate building with an excellent guide named Bogdan. He took us under the house to the cellar which had huge barrels for wine, and some storage facilities in stone that dated back to the second century! 

After touring the museum, it was time for another, more alcoholic tour: the wine-making process at Vinalia. 

We ordered dinner, then while it was cooking, one of the owners of the villa named Emlilia took us through the winemaking process and explained the fermentation process, and showed us the bottling room etc. Then she took us to the basement and explained how the oak barrels add a different taste to the wine depending on which country they come from and what kind of grape goes into them. 

Vinalia is wonderful because it is one of the few wineries in the region that lets you do a tour of the facilities even if you’re not in a group of 10 or more. It also has a place to spend the night with unbelievable views of the property, as well as a pool and a wonderful restaurant. I would definitely go out of my way to come back to this vineyard!!

Our tasting consisted of 5 different wines: 2 whites, a rosé, a fetaesca neagra, and a merlot. (Fetaesca neagra is a grape only used for wine in Romania, unfortunately, because it’s outrageously good!) Emilia also let us try the blend, which could only be described as perfect. I would honestly be lying if I said it wasn’t in the top 6 wines I’ve ever had. I can’t really tell you much else though, because… well, I had a LOT of wine.

Seth and I spent the remainder of the late afternoon soaking in its golden light and strolling through the vineyard, “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing at its beauty. 

Day 2: Transfăgărășan

The next morning I went for a slow, hungover, uncaffeinated jog around the village, mostly powered by the sugar of wine. It was painful, but totally worth it. The sky was perfectly blue, and the air was delicious (as it is every day) — not humid, a cool 60-65 degrees, and totally clear. On the way out the door around 10:15, we discovered that we got complimentary breakfast with the room, which was awesome because we had eaten very little and drunk very much the day before.

It was good I went for that run, because we would be spending the majority of the day in the car. This day, we were taking the (really) long way to Brasov in Transylvania.

Like, usually, if we’d gone the fast way, we could have gotten from wine country Brasov, to the city that contains the castle which inspired the story of Dracula, in less than 2 hours. But in order to take the Transfăgărășan, we went about 3 hours out of our way and went north via what some have called the “world’s greatest road trip” — a long, winding road that takes 4 hours to traverse, not including the many mandatory stops for photo ops. Our entire trip took about 10 hours: leaving at 11 and arriving in Brasov at 9PM.

We also wanted to go see the world’s largest hand-carved wooden spoon whose creator we had met at the Bucharest Village Museum. It was only 15 minutes out of the way on the road to the Transfăgărășan, so we stopped in a small town called Mioveni. The museum that houses the spoon was unfortunately closed, but we caught a glimpse of the spoon through the gate — luckily it was outside, and hard to miss!

Transfăgărășan translates to “through the Făgărășan,” a mountain range, in fact the highest mountain range of the southern Carpathian mountains. The road was actually another one of Communist dictator Ceaușescu’s ideas, which he commissioned and had built in about 4 years. 39 people died in the process of its construction, which sounds like a lot until you’re on it and wonder how the hell it was made at all. People aren’t really sure why he constructed it; apparently it could have served as an escape route in case the country was invaded, but it’s actually impassable 7 months out of the year. In any case, I am glad it happened, although it is obviously a tragedy that people died for it.

We drove from the South to the North. At the beginning, we drove through precious little towns. Then the second section was pine central, which, coming from the subtropics, was exotic for us. 

We also got a glimpse of the actual castle where Vlad Tepes, a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler lived. At some point there is a trail where people climb up over 400 stairs to the top, but we couldn’t find the trail. There are also reports that bears roam the area, so it could be closed permanently anyway. So we just admired it from afar, knowing we had at least another 6 hours of driving for the day anyway.

The third section was the part that everybody on the internet freaks out about, for good reason. We also freaked out. The views were un-freaking-real. We passed a few bikers, too — I imagine this bike ride would be one of the most difficult and rewarding ones ever. At this point, the weather started getting a bit colder and I took my sweater out of the car.

There’s a glacier lake you can admire on the ride, too — BECAUSE THERE’S A GLACIER AT THE TOP. We walked on it. Along with a bunch of other people, but also very cool. Some people even zip-lined across it!

We turned off the Transfăgărășan sadly and on the way into Brasov, in case what we had just seen wasn’t beautiful enough… we caught a few rainbows. One was massive. 

Driving through the gorgeous Transylvania countryside, I tried to focus on the road but the beauty of the rolling hills took my breath away every few minutes. 

We finally arrived at our Air BnB in Brasov and grabbed some dinner in the old town. More on that next time.