Thank you, KJA, for your honest comments about the fishery in Mara. I really appreciate it. I might have found a more suitable accommodation in Sighet: the Hotel Gradina Morii.

Hotel Gradina Morii in Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania from $46: Deals, Reviews, Photos | momondo

That hotel looks wonderful!

I have made revisions to my itinerary based on everyone's advice. I think it's a better itinerary. Let me know what you think. I changed Mara to Sighet; I added Cluj; changed Sibiu to 4 nights; and changed Sighisoara to 1 night.

REVISED ITINERARY:

Iasi – 2 nights

· Church of the Three Hierarchs, Ethnography Museum & Museum of Art
· One dinner at Toujours and one dinner at Trufanda

Drive from Iasi to Gura Humorului – 2 hours & 40 minutes

Gura Humorului – 2 nights

· Sucevita Monastery, Humor Monastery, Moldovita Monastery & Voronet Monastery

Drive from Gura Humorului to Sighet – 3.5 hours

Sighet – 2 or 3 nights

· UNESCO World Heritage wooden churches, such as Desesti, Budesti, Barsana, Poienile Izei, and Rogoz. There are more but not sure how many we will have time to visit.
· Sighet Prison Museum, Elie Wiesel’s childhood home, Merry Cemetery in Sapanta

Drive from Sighet to Cluj – 3 hours & 15 minutes

Cluj – 1 night

· Explore Cluj and visit the Turda Salt Mines

Drive from Cluj to Sibiu – 2 hours

Sibiu – 4 nights

· One day to explore Sibiu - Burkenthal Palace & Museum, Evangelical Church, History Museum
· One day to visit Muzeul ASTRA
· One day to drive down the Transfagarasan Highway to Balea Cascada and take cable car to Baleac Lac.
· Visit the ruined monastery at Carta after the Transfagarasan Highway.

Drive from Sibiu to Sighisoara – 1.5 hours drive - and visit Alma VII (hopefully have lunch here) and Biertan on the way to Sighisoara

Sighisoara – 1 night

· Explore Sighisoara – Clock Tower & History Museum

Drive from Sighisoara to Brasov – almost 2 hours – visit fortified church of Viscri on the way to Brasov – have lunch at Restaurant Café & Artisanal

Brasov – 2 nights

· Explore Brasov, Black Church, Ethnographic & Art Museums, and Bran’s Castle. (I know it’s touristy but I’ve read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and have seen several movie versions, so, yes, I’m a Dracula fan &#128522

Visit Peles Castle in Sinaia on the way to Bucharest.

Bucharest – 2 nights

· Museum of the Romanian Peasant; National Museum of History; National Museum of Art; explore the Old Town

Fly from Bucharest to Budapest – Looks like there are only 3 non-stop flights from Bucharest to Budapest. We will take the flight that departs Bucharest at 5PM. So we have ½ to ¾ of this day in Bucharest.

Budapest – 5 nights (might include daytrip to Szentendre – will decide when we are there) – will stay on the Pest side; seriously considering Queen’s Court Hotel

Two questions:
Still not sure if we should spend 2 nights or 3 in Sighet.
Should I add a night to Bucharest? We will have 1/2 to 3/4 of a day in Bucharest on the day we leave for Budapest.

Thank you!

You've been doing your homework!

My thoughts:

I fear that you are underestimating your drive times. Particularly in northern Romania, and perhaps particularly at the time when you plan to visit (havrvest time?), there will be times when you are stuck behind a horse-drawn cart. It's part of the experience! I'm not sure how you estimated the drive times, but would note that specifying the date and time in most such calculators is critical ... and even then, I'd say add 1/4 to 1/3 the time. At least that's been my experience.

Do plan your route for the Painted Monasteries! Check opening times, etc., and consider visiting one on your way to Gura Humorului. FWIW, I found each of these monasteries worth quite a bit of time to absorb the details, inside and out.

I enjoyed Cluj, but didn't visit the salt mine. IIRC, you like ethnographic museums? The one in Cluj is quite good. (The one in Sighet, too.) If you do go to Cluj, consider making time for the amazing modern mosaics of the Biserica Schimbarea La Fata. It can be tricky to find -- as I understand, an ecumenical dispute resulted in two churches with essentially that same name, basically next to each other. Geesh!

As to your time in Sighet, I can't advise you. I've already noted that Sighet / Sapanta will likely take a full day -- so two nights. (Don't underestimate the emotional impact of some of the things you will see there -- they can warrant allowing some moments for quiet reflection and a bit of emotional recovery.)

Whether to add a third night depends on how much you want to ensure time for the wooden churches. You can see a lot en route ... if you plan accordingly, but it looks to me like you are planning on moving apace from one destination to another. I could be wrong! Again, I managed to see most of those churches with only two nights in the area, but I chose Mara specifically to be reasonably sure that I could do that -- it was centrally located for the churches I wanted to see and I had timed my travels to catch as many as possible when moving from one place to another, and in making those plans, I paid painfully detailed attention to opening times. I'm sorry if that sounds contrarian -- I think you were wise to choose a hotel in Sighet rather than stay at the fishery in Mara! -- but there are consequences to that decision for your timing that only you can work through.

And as for Bucharest, again, only you can decide on your priorities. I think it's possible to see the things you list with just 2 nights -- maybe. For me, the three major museums in Bucharest were each worth 2 to 4 hours. I'm not sure how firmly you have committed to skipping all the other things that might warrant your attention there.

Also: Have you checked closures for the times you plan to visit various things? I don't think everything is open every day or all day....

Please forgive me, KarenWoo, if this next comment seems off-base .... but I'm getting the impression that you are rushing, headlong, into an itinerary that would be better envisioned with more attention to opportunities, on the one hand, and details, on the other. That said, I know you've found a way to plan your trips that has served you well, so I hope you will chalk my impertinence up to a love of the places I feel fortunate to have seen.

In any case, I know it will be a wonderfully memorable trip!

PS.: I'm honored that you would think so highly of my restaurant recommendations that you would add both Toujours and Trufanda to your plan ... but wow! I didn't even look either up to see current reviews! I mentioned them because I hoped you would look at them to see if you and your husband might find them of interest, trusting that you would assess them in light of more recent comments.

Note to self: Only mention restaurants to KarenWoo if I've checked the most current info!

Hi KJA,
Please don't worry. I do not think you are being impertinent. You are just giving advice based on your first-hand experience and that is what I asked for.

I got all of my driving times from Google which I know is not always 100% accurate. So we will make allowances for that. And I have checked all the opening and closing times for museums, churches, etc. I notice most museums are closed on Mondays. Some are also closed on Tuesdays.

I will plan on spending 3 nights in Sighet to make sure we have time to see and do what we want to do. I will keep the 2 nights in Bucharest. That's ok if we can't see everything. My philosophy is that I am happy if we can visit most places, and visiting a country, place, etc. is better than never visiting, even if we can't see everything. I am always happy with what we do see. Our trip will now be 17 nights in Romania and 5 nights in Hungary, which is one night more than we planned for. But that's ok. I really don't want to make this trip any longer than that. We spent 6 weeks in Australia and New Zealand in Oct/Nov 2024, and we will spend 5 weeks in Italy this May/June. We don't have the desire or energy to do a longer trip in September. And we will have several trips in between to visit our daughter who now lives in Texas. So we have to stay home sometimes.

Anyways, thank you so much for all of your invaluable help!

Thanks for your understanding, KarenWoo! I trust you will enjoy Romania and Budapest as much as I did. I know how hard it can be to fit a trip into a specific time frame -- you've done a great job!

FWIW: The driving times google gave me for northern Romania (north of, say, Sibiu) were consistently WAY too low; my drives often took about 50% more than google had suggested -- even when I entered the starting date and time. Perhaps your experience will be different.

Now, if you can find a moment to check the PMs I've sent.... I know you know how to do so, as we exchanged messages that way back in the days of COVID....

If you have an extra night to spend somewhere, You should consider Sinaia on the way to Bucharest. It is very lovely resort and they have some very interesting places to stay, including right on the royal estate of Peles and Pelisor Castles. I did not stay there, but if I had known about it beforehand, this is what I would have done. One place is called Vila Sipot and the other has the unfortunate name of Economat, which must mean something completely different in Romanian, because it looks like a castle itself.

That way you can just walk on over to the castles and see them first thing. You do have to keep in mind that there is a closing day for the castles, I think Monday, but best to check.

Thanks, shelemm! The places in Sinaia look wonderful. Will consider them and see how an overnight will fit into our itinerary.

BTW, how far in advance did you make your hotel reservations?

I made my reservations anywhere from 5 months in advance to just the day before. In a couple of cases I didn't know in advance how far we would travel. And in another case I decided to leave Brasov a night early and stay a night in Sinaia, just that day. We wound up in a very modern hotel (usually not my preference) that had an exceptional breakfast, so that made up for it.


I do not think Romania is the type of place where you need reservations much in advance. There seems to be way more hotels than could possibly be filled, and all the places have pretty reasonable prices as well as decent standards which can be easily discerned from the various booking sites. So if you want to hold off, you can.

One thing you should be aware of: in this part of the world, a hotel might say they have parking, but it could mean only a few spaces or simply a few public spaces that they don't fully control. We didn't have a serious problem, but just be aware that parking in a historic town is not as straightforward as you'd wish. In Brasov, as kja already knows, this could mean hunting for a public space in a city where most parking is set aside for residents.

Romania has a nice app to pay for parking, and this will come in handy in Brasov. It is used in a myriad of other cities as well. In Sibiu, we stayed outside of town. And in Sighi we managed to get one of the few spaces in an alley by our hotel, though it was quite a feat to extricate ourselves when it came time to leave. Brasov parking is the most difficult, though still we managed.

IIRC, I made my reservations about 2 or 3 months in advance; I could be wrong! By then, options that suited my preferences and price point were extremely limited in Bucharest. And places that offered parking where I would need it (I didn’t have a car in Iasi or Bucharest) were limited. I didn’t have a trouble booking for Iasi, but I suspect the availability of rooms varies with the academic calendar.

When I booked something that said there would be parking, there was, invariably, parking. The story shelemm mentions about Brasov was for a place that did not have its own parking; instead, it noted the availability of public parking nearby. I’d dispute the estimate of just how close it was, but there was, in fact, a public parking lot … just one that wasn’t accurately marked on Google Maps, so it was very hard (and frustrating) to find. I’ve already described the complications I encountered with that parking lot, but want to be clear – the hotel had never said that IT had parking.

(I got your message and hope you got my reply. If not, could you check to ensure that your settings allow PMs from me? I do have a question for you….)

kja, I checked and my settings were not set to receive PM's from you. So I changed that. I replied to you a short while ago. Thanks for letting me know.

I'm looking forward to hearing about how this trip pans out for you! Romania, Croatia, and Greece are currently my top contenders for a 2026 trip.

memejs, you have some wonderful choices on your list. We have traveled to both Croatia and Greece, and we loved both countries.

I have also been following Karen’s meticulous planning, though Romania is rather low on my priorities right now. We want to do Croatia and the Istrian peninsula, probably next year. Bordeaux and Dordogne on the works too, plus a long overdue visit to London and the UK.

So many places to see and not enough time…

geetika, I absolutely agree with you. So many places to see and not enough time! We loved Croatia and the Dordogne. Haven't been to Bordeaux. We were initially planning to visit Ireland and England (haven't been to London since the 70's) this September but after reading kja and shelemm's TR's on Romania, we decided to visit Romania and Budapest instead. But still planning on Ireland and England for the near future, either 2026 or 2027.

Hi Karen,

Thank you for your trip reports and posting the great photos.

I wanted to offer a suggestion about food in Romania. Some traditional menu foods are: Mici, Sarmale and Ciorba RadauTeana. Dessert : Papanasi. From my experience the quality of the food can vary in many ways from one restaurant to another.

The national drink is a strong brandy made from plums: Tuica. In Romania many people make their own wine. The wine may be offered for sale outside a home.

In Bucharest a restaurant suggestion: Caru cu bere.

Please be careful of your personal items in Bucharest. Having said that the people have a great sense of irony and friendliness. A wonderful place to visit.

Romanian wine is very drinkable, my brother’s Romanian friend imports and supplies it in the US and has gifted us some decent vintages.

I was rather disappointed in the desserts in Budapest, expected much fancier stuff. Not just restaurants, even bakeries had quite pedestrian pickings. Perhaps we didn’t know where to go and what to ask for…

Mendota, thank you so much for your restaurant recommendation and your information about food in Romania. I admit I don't know anything about Romanian food but we love trying different ethnic foods. Are you from Romania?

I am surprised that you were disappointed in the desserts in Budapest. I would expect fancy desserts, too, based on photos I've seen and read about. Hopefully, our hotel can give some good recommendations. BTW, this morning I made our reservations at the Queen's Court Hotel in Budapest that you recommended. And thanks for the tip about booking through the hotel's website. Their rate is lower than Booking.com, and it comes with some extras you wouldn't get on Booking.com.
Thank you!