Today was our last day in Brasov as we headed back to Bucharest for one night to continue our journey south into Bulgaria tomorrow.

The train I booked taking us out of the city didn’t leave until 2pm giving up plenty of time to do some stuff before we had to leave.

A cable car up the mountain

We woke up at 9:00, which was perfect, because the nearby cable car up the mountain overlooking Brasov starting operating at 9:30.

We walked over to the foot of the fountain and were pleasant surprised to see no line.   There were about 10 of us for the first cable car up the mountain and we all fit in the car.

I guess the early bird, does in fact, get the worm.

There trip up the mountain took only a couple of minutes.   As we went up, we quickly began to see what all the fuss was about.

The view of the city of Brasov was incredible from up here.

You know what the mountain is most known for, though?

It’s Hollywood type sign of “Brasov” sitting in big letters atop the mountain overlooking the city.

Our tour guide the other day told us it was placed there “temporarily” for some festival or event back in 1999 and it was never taken down after.

She also told us the locals hate it cause it’s so unoriginal, and frankly, kind of tacky looking.

But, here we were, atop the mountain, ready to walk over to behind the sign to take in the view.

On our way on the trail over to the sign, we came upon a man just sitting on a log in the middle of the path playing his saxophone.

Such a smart place to setup camp, if he didn’t get a donation from us on the way to the sign, he would say “Oh, where are you from?” “Canada?” “Very nice, God bless you” and then how could you not donate to him on the way back?

Checking out

By 10:30 we headed back down the mountain on our way back to the hostel to finish packing and checkout.

By the way, the woman who ran/owned/lived at? the hostel was a somewhat kind of crazy.

I have no earthly idea how the place got such good reviews.   Sure the beds are huge and spacious but the common area is pretty lax, and she was so anal retentive and passive aggressive about everything in her home.

She was always “busy” and didn’t have time to stop and answer questions and she would mutter (well, actually loudly speak) about how people wouldn’t do this or wouldn’t do that.

In essence, she just made the place not feel very welcoming.

I mean, I loved Brasov but I would definitely stay somewhere else next time, that’s for sure.

Although, those sweet big beds – man, those were soooo nice.

An Irish breakfast

We decided to stop by a place we had noticed the night before when we were scouring menu boards for something to eat.

After so many rich and heavy Romanian meals, we were craving just a normal breakfast.

Where did we go?

Well, an Irish pub/restaurant naturally!

Smack dab off the main square was an Irish pub offering a full Irish breakfast on their menu.

Works for me.

The breakfast was eggs, ham, sausage, beans, grilled tomato and toast.

Of course I opted for no toast, but the breakfast was just what the doctor ordered.

After paying, I, for the third time already this trip, left my silicone water bottle behind.   Thankfully, the waitress ran after us down the street to hand it back to me.

Top notch service for ya there!

It was noon and we still had a good hour and a half before we needed to catch the bus for the train station.

We’d run out of things to do and, frankly, walking around with the big backpacks didn’t seem that appealing.

We decided to just head to the train station and wait there for the train.

What the hell is this train?

Now, I know we’re deep in Eastern Europe, but I guess my expectations for trains has been a little high.

Granted, the train we took into the city was alright with nice seats and air conditioning.

As this one today rolled up on the tracks, it quickly became apparent that this one wouldn’t be quite as comfy.

This old rickety train stopped at our platform and we grabbed our seat.   The train kind of looked like something out of the Soviet era.

The kicker though was there was no air conditioning and it moved so slowly down the tracks.

Yeah, this was gonna be a long, uncomfortable ride.

Square pegs in round holes

I spent the first hour or so on the train on my laptop powered by a mobile hotspot for internet.

I desperately needed to figure out how in the hell we were getting from Bucharest to Veliko Tarnovo tomorrow.

These are the situations I hate.

I hate having to frantically plan out parts of a trip while I’m on it.

It’s stressful and not fun at all and it’s genuinely like trying to fit square pegs in round holes sometimes.

I had spent the time pretrip to plan all this stuff out so I wouldn’t be in this situation, however, the FlixBus I had planned on taking no longer appeared on their website.   I don’t know if the route was discontinued or what, but it just wasn’t there.

Anyway, after cruising both Romanian and Bulgarian train websites, I still couldn’t get it to all piece together without either a ridiculous 1am bus out of Bucharest, or a long stop tomorrow afternoon in the little Bulgarian border town of Ruse.

In the end, I finally gave in and booked a taxi service from Bucharest to Ruse for 75€ ($110) and then a train tomorrow morning from Ruse to our final destination of Veliko Tarnovo.

This is actually where traveling with someone came in handy as if I was on my own, I most definitely wouldn’t have paid that much for a taxi but between the two of us it’s $55 each and the bus ticket would have been $20 so it was only $35 more.

And, at this point, $35 was just the right price to end my suffering in this situation!

With that out of the way, I spent the rest of the ride popping together yesterday’s blog and, soon enough, we were pulling into the Bucharest train station.

Hi again, Bucharest

We arrived in town around 5:00 and headed into the city to our new hostel.

After the fiasco with the air conditioning earlier in the week at the other hostel here in Bucharest, I had cancelled our booking for tonight there and booked this place instead right smack dab in the middle of the old town.

We checked in and, as always, took a nice hot shower to clean off all the stickiness.   Into the laundry bag go the old clothes and into nice, fresh, new clothes.

Ready to tackle the night…

Mission: Tiramisu

Now, for the last week, I’ve been tortured by seeing Tiramisu in the dessert section of every menu we’ve seen here in Romania.

I love tiramisu!

I also now have a gluten allergy, so I can’t have tiramisu.

It’s torture, I tell you!

Before I left for my trip, I had marked out various restaurants in each city to try.

I either marked them because they had authentic food from the country to try, or they were gluten friendly.   Ideally, a combination of both, but I’ll settle for either.

Anyway, I had marked this place, Ergo Restaurant, on my map and, for whatever reason, we just couldn’t make it there the previous two nights we were here in Bucharest.

That was about to change tonight.

I literally had one goal for tonight, our one and only and last night here in Bucharest.

Go that restaurant!

And, more importantly, have their gluten free tiramisu for dessert!

The place is a bit of a walk out of the main touristy area of town, which, despite the walk, is never a bad thing.

We sat down at 7:00 to an empty restaurant and opened the menu.

The place was kind of semi fine dining, but I didn’t care, I was treating myself tonight.

First off, an Espresso martini.

Actually two.

Well, really I had three, but don’t tell anybody…

For a starter, I had a beat salad with goat cheese and for dinner I had a pork leg with truffled mashed potatoes.

The presentation on the dishes was so beautiful and the pork was so tender, it literally fell right off the bone.

Oh my God – that meal was amazing!

And, of course, for dessert – tiramisu!

Yup, it was worth the wait.

We took our time with the meal and it was just after 8:30 when we finished.

Enough time to walk over to the water fountains in the center of town to, once again, see the water fountain show at 9:00.

Reflecting at the water fountain

The water fountain show here in Bucharest runs every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 9pm for 45 minutes.

Thousands of people come out for the music and light show and, frankly, if I lived here, I’d probably be here for every one of the shows.

We strode up to the fountains with just 5 minutes to spare, and we magically were able to grab two seats perched on the ledge of the biggest fountain in the center.

Sweet!

The show, of course, was amazing again.

What made it more special for me though, was the fact that today would have been my mom’s birthday.

She sadly passed away last year and she was definitely prominent in my mind today as I traveled.

The combination of the serenity of the water show and some of the slower music gave me time to really reflect on my trip and on life.

And, of course, to think of my mom.

I won’t lie, there were quite a few tears in my eyes at times but, luckily, it was dark out and I don’t think a single soul noticed.

Not that I would have minded, sometimes it’s good to let your emotions show, ya know?

Anyway, I couldn’t think of a better way to end the day.

Tomorrow, like I said, we head south over the border into the town of Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria.

More adventure awaits…