After researching the beautiful castles of Romania, we decided to visit Pelez Castle. Most people will visit the famous ‘Bran Castle’ which is regarded as the home of Dracula himself, but is also overrun with tourists (which we try to avoid 🙂 ). Pelez looked a lot more impressive, as it is located in the mountains among beautiful greenery in the town of Sinaia. In the winter, this is a popular ski resort town for Romanians. Of course (as we always end up doing), we arrived in Sinaia late at night and had to find our hotel in the dark..and in the rain. After going the wrong way on a dirt road up the wrong hotel’s driveway, we found our hotel. Well, it was more an entire one bedroom apartment to ourselves with balconies on both sides. The catch is it was $55!! Another thing that always happens with us is because we try to cram as much as we can in one day, by the time we get to the next city, the restaurants are usually closed and we end up either getting local fast food or…McDonalds (always reliable and you know you won’t get sick there)! We actually have made it a habit to try McDonalds in every country!
Anyways, we woke up the next morning and went straight to Pelez. I guess because Sinaia is up in the mountains, it does rain a lot, however, in the end I think the clouds only added to the dramatic Pelez Castle. Once inside, I was absolutely blown away by the Castle. It was actually the first ‘modern’ castle that was ever built because it included electricity. On the first floor, there was a retractable ceiling on top of the main room. This way, the King could host his guests while enjoying the outdoors! There were two floors, with the upstairs rooms built around the open floor plan, like a balcony overlooking the main room.