Eastern Europe Cultural Large Tour

You will arrive at the Henri Coandă international airport, located several km away from Bucharest. There, you will meet your guide who will tell you more about the tour and then take you to your hotel.

Accommodation will be provided downtown, in one of Bucharest’s top hotels, such as Hotel Radisson Blu or similar.

After breakfast we will go on a panoramic sightseeing tour of Bucharest’s most important and flashy buildings and tourist attractions. We will also visit the Parliament Palace.

We will then proceed to depart for Sinaia. We will make a short stop en route near Ploiesti – city known as the city of Black Gold.

Afterwards, we will arrive in Sinaia mountain resort, called The Pearl of the Carpathians and visit the Peleș Castle – the world’s first castle which is fully powered by locally produced electricity.

Late afternoon we will arrive in Brașov where we can admire the main attractions of the Town Hall Square, including the Black Church. This is where we will also have an accommodation.

After breakfast, we will drive to Zărnești to visit the bear sanctuary – the largest bear sanctuary of Europe and the second worldwide in terms of animal population.

Then, after another 20 minutes’ drive, we will arrive in Bran. Once arrived here, we will visit Dracula’s Castle, the place where prince Vlad Țepeș, the inspiration for Dracula, was imprisoned before he was taken to Budapest. Bran Castle is home to a rich collection of Romanian and foreign furniture and art items from the 14th – 19th centuries. It sits up atop a 200 ft. tall rock, overlooking the picturesque village of Bran. On the grounds bellow there is an open-air ethnographic museum of old village buildings with exhibits of furniture, household objects, and costumes.

We will continue our journey by driving toSâmbăta de Sus situated at the foot of the Făgărași Mountains in a tranquil area which invites you to meditation and prayer, where we will visit Sâmbăta Monastery, built in the 17th century.

Finally, we will arrive in Sibiu where we will have booked an accommodation.

After breakfast, we will enjoy a relaxing city tour of Sibiu, the European Capital of Culture in 2007, a medieval city with narrow streets and gothic architecture. Considered to be the jewel in the crown of German Siebenbuergen (Transylvania), the town dates back from 1400 and is one of the main tourist attraction in Romania.

We will then depart for Alba Iulia, an important city in both Romanian and Hungarian cultures. The unification of Transylvania with Moldavia and Wallachia was proclaimed here and in the beautiful archbishopric cathedral is the final resting place of many Transylvanian rulers. Upon arrival we will visit the castle of Alba Iulia.

We will then depart for Turda to visit one of the most beautiful and original salt mines in the world – Turda’s Salt Mines.

Late in the afternoon we will arrive in Cluj Napoca where we will take a short sightseeing tour around the centre of the town and we will visit the beautiful neo-gothic St. Michael church. Accommodation will also be provided here.

After breakfast, we will start this transfer day from Romania to Hungary, making our way from Cluj to Budapest.

Our first stop will be in the picturesque village of Izvorul Crisului with typical architecture for this area, where we will have some free shopping program – the entire village is a big “souvenir” shop; almost each house on the main street has its own little store selling all types of locally produced merchandise. The men of the village are well-known good carpenters, masons and wood-carvers and the women are known for having a long tradition of embroidering.

We will then enter a distinct ethnographical area of Transylvania, the Calata-Kalotaszeg, where we will discover the szekler Heritage. The main attraction for both scholarly and tourist visitors of this region unified by geography, history and language is the visual aspect of its ethnography. We will meet the people of this particular area in Calata village and learn about their traditions, habits and beautiful colourful costumes. You will be delighted by a folk performance held by locals with traditional dances, presentation of the local folk costumes and local cuisine.
We will then proceed to Oradea and stop in the Old Town Centre of ,Varadinum Citadel as it was called in Latin.

We will cross the Hungarian-Romanian border at Ártánd and arrive in Budapest late in the evening where accommodation will be provided