1. Bucharest. Aside from the city itself being so off-putting, we almost had no place to stay for the night. Thank goodness for the nice girls who let us borrow their phones.
2. Târgovişte. Our escape from Bucharest brought us to a city that was much farther away from the castle than we were led to believe. Furthermore, there were no more buses to Curtea de Argeş until the morning.
3. It began to rain – the first rain we have seen all trip started on the bus from Târgovişte to Câmpulung forcing us to seek shelter because the next bus from there to Curtea de Argeş was again, not until the morning. We were told the buses left regularly in the morning (6:00, 7:30, 9:45, 10:45, and 12:30)
4. Since we had not planned on spending the night, we didn’t budget for accommodation. We only had about 45 lei, and the only country where our debit cards won’t work is Romania. Not that it would make much difference because nearly the only hotel in town wouldn’t accept credit. Additionally, it was Sunday so all of the exchange places were closed. Originally we wanted to catch the 6:00am bus but needed to change plans in order to wait until the banks opened in the morning.
5. The list of bus times we were given was wrong. The Curtea de Argeş bus only left at 6:00 and 12:30. So we had to sit around the bus station for about 3 hours.
6. During this long wait, it started to rain again. Worst of all, a bird flew into the station and was trapped. The poor bird was so scared it flew into a window above our seats and literally fell onto Lisa and her backpack. The traumatized bird laid there helplessly until an older woman picked it up and set it outside.
7. The Curtea de Argeş bus supposed to take us past the city closer to Poenari De Arges. Right before we left the autogar we discovered that Poenari Castle was not near Poenari De Arges but by Arfeu – a different bus about 400 meters away. We ran with a gang of dogs for a minute and the minibus picked us up. (It’s still raining…)
8. The Arfeu minibus was super packed and we ended up standing like sardines in a can. It was a rather uncomfortable ride and we still didn’t know where exactly to get off the bus.
9. The rain slowed and the sky started to clear up as we reached the village of Capatanenii. At this point Dracula must have given us his best for making it this far because a woman who spoke English on the bus offered her assistance and told the bus driver where to let us off. The castle was now in sight! And a dog near where the bus dropped us off offered us her companionship and protection on the 3 km walk to the beginning of the steps of the castle.
After all of the set backs, the entire excursion was surprisingly vampire free!
Castle Poenari - Dracula's Fortress. Romania.
(more pictures to come when the computer isn’t so stubborn)
