Surviving the Transfagarasan Highway

We left Transylvania country via the Transfagarasan Highway. This 90km stretch through the Fagaras Mountains has some dangerous (and deadly) curves. Luckily, we were driving the tamer end of it, the southern tip, from Pitesti to just above Arefu. Our destination was Poenari Fortress, the “real” castle of Vlad the Impaler. Vlad didn’t build Poenari, he pretty much stole it from the last owner, and then made it bigger and stronger to fight off invading forces. I don’t understand how anyone could actually invade this, as it is built on top of a very high, and steep, hill. The only way up to the current ruins is climbing 1480 steps. I don’t know what kind of path was there in the 15th century, but getting up there in full battle gear and weaponry must have been exhausting. It must have been very easy for the soldiers in the castle to pick off the invaders while they were busy catching their breath.

There’s not much left to the ruins, pretty much just outer walls and a bit of the original tower. The fortress was abandoned about 100 years after Vlad’s death, then in the late 1800’s was mostly destroyed by an earthquake. Today, Bran Castle gets top billing as Dracula’s “home”, even though Vlad spent much more time at Poenari, mostly due to the fact that Bran was still an operating castle at the time Bram Stoker wrote Dracula (and, Stoker never actually went to Romania, writing only from research).

Laura and I also stopped in to Horezu, a town known for its pottery and ceramics. We sought out the home pottery studio and shop of a woman whose pottery I bought in Sibiu. The shopkeeper there told us how to find her. She invited us in, even though it was a Sunday and she wasn’t actually working that day, and showed us her full selection. Yeah, we bought a little more. Unfortunately, pottery is not an easy (or light) souvenir to take home, so I had to be a bit picky.

Before heading south, towards Bucharest, Laura and I decided to drive a bit of the Transfagarasan Highway north, just to see what we could see. (I kept screwing up the name, and just decided to call it the Farfenugen Highway for the rest of the day.) We reached a large dam, one that rivals the Hoover Dam, with a reservoir lake. A gorgeous spot. On the hill above is a giant silver statue, holding what looks to be a thunderbolt looking like something out of Marvel comics. Still need to look that up to figure out what it’s all about.

After a long day of driving, we left Transylvania and headed towards Bucharest. We stopped for the night in the town of Pitesti and decided it was a perfect time and place to enjoy a Chinese dinner in Romania.