Bucharest Explorer Trips

An excellent tour itinerary. We stayed in the town centers which made access to all the lovely historical buildings easy. The variety of activities was good too. Staying 2 nights at each place was important. Our tour guide is great and she was willing to talk about the positives and negatives of living in Romania.

Overall, this was an excellent tour. The guide was calm, friendly and knowledgeable. The driver was cautious and friendly. We had a larger bus so there was plenty of room to spread out. I enjoyed the later starts in the mornings. Castle Peles was the top attraction, pity there wasn’t time to visit the other on site. Castle Bran was a great stop. Considering the age of the travellers, the stairs at the Braşov accommodation were difficult. The location, however, was perfect. The visit to the local house could have been organised differently, there was too much waiting around and not enough time in Sibiu itself.

The places we visited were interesting and the countryside was really nice. Unfortunately a couple of things marred the trip - the bus was too big which meant that we were unable to go to certain places including one hotel. One of the hotels was not up to Blue-Roads standard- my room was in the loft and could only be accessed by spiral stairs which were really steep! Our bags were not taken to our rooms and there was no way I could get it up the stairs- thankfully our guide took my bag for me and even he struggled. Most of the group were 60+ hence expecting people to climb steep stairs carrying bags was ridiculous! The guide and driver were both fantastic.

My trip to Romania - Mountains to Monasteries - was very good. We were fortunate to have a very knowledgeable guide, Bonta Stelian, who was passionate about his country. We learned about the history of Romania from the time of the Ottoman invasions and subsequent wars, the Communist era to the present time. The drive through Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains was memorable. Our driver, Andrew, was very competent which was important due to the very winding roads. He did have trouble getting us to a couple of the hotels because of the size of the bus. Shouldn't have been booked at these because we then had to walk.

I enjoyed this tour very much, but strongly recommend the itinerary gets some tweeking. There is only one monastery in the tour, so the tour's title is a bit misleading, and the monastery is not especially interesting. The majority of the sites visited are Saxon - and what a fascinating history!! I don't understand why you would not include (and market in your advertising) the ancient Dacian civilization??? They were the first settlers of Romania !! Their artefacts are few but amazing, they are held in only two locations, one where the tour starts and ends in Bucharest, the other close to one of our overnight stays. Ditto not mentioning Dracula and Bram Stoker....??? So not a tour called Romania - Mountains and Monasteries, but perhaps Romania - Transylvania's Mountains and Saxon Heritage....? The tour guide and driver were excellent. Accommodation was good, noting that Romania is still developing its tourism infrastructure.

Need a full day tour of Bucharest, not just the short tour we had then drive to the next town. So many castles, monasteries, cathedrals, walled towns, fortified churches! All spectacular but…Need some variety. The brandy tour and the cooking class good but how about a winery visit and a concert at one of the many philharmonic halls? Mountains great: pity about closed road from snow on peak so we couldn’t reach the view from the top. Guide excellent. Driver also. Good bus. Good mix of compatible tourists. Should review that last day: maybe extend a day to include say a winery or something but mainly to avoid that long boring 5 hour non-stop highway drive back to Bucharest. All in all a very interesting trip. Worth doing. Ex-communist country working to adapt to democracy, still quite poor but climbing. Infrastructure insufficient yet: needs roadworks badly. A couple of highways but every other road is a back road. Far more traffic than roads can accommodate: result congestion. We saw only a small part of Romania of course, and it might be worth going back to see more. Great first effort. Looking forward to see how you tweak it