To Romania And Beyond

We had a busy day rearranging our lives for the next few days with very helpful Tauck representatives who have been most helpful to us. We will tour with a delightful couple from Australia named Joy and Garry and will see some of what we would have seen and have planned alternate destinations in Romania. We will go to Snagov Monastery, the burial place of Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula). Since this is where Dracula is buried, we obviously must go during the day since going at night could be a real pain in the neck. Just to be on the safe side we will go with garlic, holy water, crucifixes, and silver stakes. Romanians have had an interesting relationship  with Dracula. He was  real person but Romanians did not like Bram Stoker' s fictionalized account of him. However, since Bran Castle is such a tourist attraction, Romanians now embrace his characterization as a vampire and welcome tourists who will part with their money for a tour and any number of cheap souvenirs that play up his vampireness. We will also venture to Ruse in Bulgaria and a couple of other locations in Bulgaria as another day trip. We will also go to the Black Sea for another day trip. On the 25th, we four intrepid travellers will go to Brasov, a medieval city where we will spend the night. Joy and Garry will go to Bran where Dianne and I went yesterday while we explore Brasov. We then will go to two more medieval cities in Transylvania named Sighisoara and Sibiu where we will spend a night each. We return to Bucharest on the 28th and fly to Budapest on the 29th where we will spend 4 nights and see the sights prior to our return as scheduled on July 3rd. It's not what we had in mind, but we are pleased with how everything has worked out and can't say enough positive comments about our Tauck directors who have been with with us every step of the way and have been the definition of professional, courteous, and helpful. I don't know that we will have wireless issues in Transylvania, but if we do, there may some incommunicado days on the blog; but I will do my best to keep you in the loop.