Technically, my birthday was on the Monday, but I decided to make it a long weekend… Starting with waking up to this beautiful spectacle…… Bliss!
…and my major destination… The incredible Transfăgărășan Road!
…but we will get to that soon enough…
Happy Birthday to me!
Part of my present to myself was a set of watercolours and artist pencils… and so I sat in my beautiful window seat… looking out at the world…
…and created my first ever pictures with coloured pencils… (this is Glen Affric in Scotland)…
I droo a coo…
…and my first ever animal in multi-media watercolour and pencil… A highland cow named Ben. OK, technically, because of the shape of the horns, this is a girl cow, not a boy bull, but I like the name Ben after all the wonderful bens in Scotland…
…although, I wasn’t sure early on if it would even look like a cow!
Then off to one of my favourite haunts… and I love little things like seeing so many bicycles and scooters here that have not been chained up… They are everywhere! I love that…
…and this strange policeman with his whistle… The lights were working just fine, and at the end, it looks like he was attempting to take flight… He continued for about 15 minutes, before mozying on somewhere else to do who knows what… Strange…
…and yet another Romanian Street Party…
…then meeting a friend for drinks in the bar…
…but reading one of the books published in the 1800s that travel with me – in this instance, volume one of Sir Walter Scott’s abridged biography… published in 1874…
…then Max arrived! He has done work for us for years, but we’ve never met. We had soooo much fun and talked for hours!
Transfagarasan Road Trip
Then, on Tuesday morning, it was off for the road trip of all road trips – the famous Transfăgărășan Road – with my new friend and driver, Florin…
I love that Romania is such a mix of old and new…
Airstrip?
This road is dead straight for a reason… In the time of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the road was built without a barrier in the middle, and doubled-up as an airstrip!
No, this is not a nuclear plant…
THIS is the Transfargarasan Road!
First, how to say it…
Transfăgărășan = trans-fah-garra-shaan
What does it mean?
The road goes through the Fargaras Mountains… so it is trans+fargaras (and add an an on the end)
We will get more on that soon… but first we need to get there…
EXTREME ALERT…
Along the way, both of our phones start blasting warning signals… What does this say? Basically, that there are wild bears next to the road… and we press on…
The Transfăgărășan road was constructed between 1970 and 1974, at the orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, and was meant to have a strategic importance in case of a Soviet invasion.
- It has the longest road tunnel in Romania – 887 meters – Capra Tunnel
- The Transfagarasan Road (National Road DN 7C) begins in Cartisoara and ends in Bascov, covering a total length of 151 km / 94 miles
- The highest point is at 2042 meters (it is the second-highest in Romania, after the Transalpina)
- The road has 833 small bridges and 28 viaducts
Looking in between the mountains, the fortress is visible…
Poenari Citadel (Cetatea Poenari in Romanian), is a ruined castle in Romania which was a home of the real-life Vlad the Impaler (inspiration for Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’).
Vidraru Dam
If you happen to watch the full Top Gear episode where they feature the Transfăgărășan Road (and say that it is the best road in the world!), the bottom of the dam is where they spend the night, sleeping in their sports cars…
The Vidraru Dam was completed in 1966 with the primary purpose of serving a hydroelectrical power plant. One of the largest hydroelectric dams in Europe it stands 166 metres tall and can produce as much as 400 GWh of power per year.
…and an opportunity to be a good samaratin to a stuck motorcyclist…
…and a good thing they were on their way, because you remember that extreme alert about wild bears…?
