TL;DRStray dogs are a common sight all over Romania, wandering streets, roadsides, restaurants and even tourist spots — at one cable car viewpoint, travellers whiled away the queue stroking the puppies. The road out of Bucharest runs through towns like Pitești and Târgu Jiu to the village of Golești, home to the Muzeul Viticulturii with its 17th-century castle, currently under renovation, and next to it a rebuilt early-20th-century village funded by the EU, complete with church, school, town hall, pub and cemetery. Along the way you’ll spot Roma travellers with horse-drawn carts and dusty, down-at-heel towns where visitors are clearly seen as odd intruders. The whole region feels like a clash between neglected Romanian countryside and little pockets of Western-style development built on European funding.
We left Bucharest airport, heading for Targu Jiu.
We crawled through traffic on the motorway, surrounded by nothing. Nothing in the form of peeling walls, faded advertising signs on neglected houses, and yellow fields of dried-out grass. Nothing. No mountains in the background. No anything. That divine, romantic Romanian landscape certainly neither began nor ended in these parts. Just grime carried by the dry southern heat.
Where on earth had we gone? I was starting to worry that there really was nothing here. This was our first taste of
Romania — and it was nothing like the postcards.
Tips and Tricks for Your Vacation
Don’t Overpay for Flights
Search for flights on Kayak. It’s our favorite search engine because it scans the websites of all airlines and always finds the cheapest connection.
Book Your Accommodation Smartly
The best experiences we’ve had when looking for accommodation (from Alaska to Morocco) are with Booking.com, where hotels, apartments, and entire houses are usually the cheapest and most widely available.
Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Good travel insurance will protect you against illness, accidents, theft, or flight cancellations. We’ve had a few hospital visits abroad, so we know how important it is to have proper insurance arranged.
Where we insure ourselves: SafetyWing (best for everyone) and TrueTraveller (for extra-long trips).
Why don’t we recommend any Czech insurance company? Because they have too many restrictions. They set limits on the number of days abroad, travel insurance via a credit card often requires you to pay medical expenses only with that card, and they frequently limit the number of returns to the Czech Republic.
Find the Best Experiences
Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can book guided walks, trips, skip-the-line tickets, tours, and much more. We always find some extra fun there!
