Brasov, Romania

After the disappointment of Bușteni, we were looking forward to reaching Brașov. Unfortunately, our accommodation wasn’t exactly ideally located. It was way out in the suburbs, leaving us with a fairly long journey whenever we wanted to get into the city centre.

But, as it turned out, perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.

The suburbs gave us something we hadn’t realised we needed: a bit of peace and quiet. There were some lovely little cafés and plenty of good, affordable food options nearby — a combination that was becoming increasingly difficult to find elsewhere. In fact, we ended up enjoying our time in the suburb considerably more than our time actually exploring Brașov.

The city itself was… nice. There was a pleasant walk up the mountain beside the old town to a viewing platform, which gave us some good views over the city. The old town was cute enough, but it also felt rather familiar — almost like a cut-and-paste version of dozens of other European old towns we’d already seen.

And, honestly, that was about it. Brașov was perfectly pleasant, but it wasn’t somewhere that was going to linger particularly long in the memory.

Next stop: Sibiu. Hopefully, that one would leave a little more of an impression.

By this point, though, we were beginning to develop a surprisingly strong dislike of Romania.