Figure 8 On A Bike

At this point in the trip we were feeling a little discouraged, a little gray, a little tired of packing, and a little ready to relax. We couldn't quite start this second round in Brașov relaxing; however, as we had to check out of the hotel and check into the Airbnb where we had left our stuff. Our host wasn't getting back to us, so when we checked out of our hotel, we used the codes from the last time to get into the complex. We snatched some shoes from our pile of stuff in the laundry room and left our mountaineering gear in the pile. Unburdened, we headed out for another day of sightseeing in Brașov. We checked out some places we hadn't seen during our first stay in Brașov. Like Rope street which claims to be Europe's narrowest alley. We enjoyed the street art and graffiti before heading towards Biserica Ortodoxa Sfântul Nicolae and the First Roman School. It was steadily raining and we were looking forward to hiding inside the museum. Alas, when we arrived...

We knew good weather was supposed to be in store for Saturday, and woke up that morning to find the skies clearer and sun brighter than any day so far. I strolled out into the sunroom to appreciate the full view of the mountains, when something a bit off in color against the cliffs and snow caught my eye. There in the distance, exactly where our internet resource had said - icefalls! Water frozen blue against the dark rocks, inviting us out to come test our picks and crampons. What did those people in Bucharest and Brasov know? Here was the climbing we'd hoped for since first landing in Romania. I rushed to grab Susan and we stared out the window together, casting aside all our other plans and reorganizing to head up the valley again. The view from the sun deck at the cabana - spot the ice!

After our string of city days we were looking forward to our time in Sinaia where we had a very nice apartment booked. Sinaia is a small town in Romania's Bucegi Mountains. To get there we experienced our first Romanian train. We had been warned that Romanian trains were old and slow and not up to European standards. To us Americans they were marvels of public transit, though we could see the complaint that much of the infrastructure in the country dated to the communist era and was in sore need of investment. There were no indicators of which stop we were at so we had to use Ben's phone GPS to anticipate which stop we needed to get off at. The station was small and cute and we managed to order a taxi to take us the short distance to our place up the hill. It was raining, which was depressing as we wanted snow. We took the day to run grocery errands and the following day we spent relaxing in the apartment and planning future parts of the trip. Rainy Sinaia