Ron Corbin – Page 20 – RV Travels in Europe and North America

September 20, 2023 Villanova IT

Our ferry loading experiences in Greece have always been interesting, and today was another example of that, as I was almost arrested for human trafficking. When I left you yesterday we had just returned to François after having our last Greek dinner and were waiting for the ferry to arrive.

We had struck up a conversation with our British neighbors, and the wives decided they would go thru the pedestrian entrance together and I would follow the neighbor thru the security check to get into the port. They were adamant that the vehicles could only have the driver in them. So our plan was to drive thru security and then go find the wives on the inside of the port. So about 1030 Ton and our neighbor headed into the terminal, and we took the motorhomes over to the security gate for the port.

The checks were the normal passport, ticket, and random opening of doors by the Greek Coastguard, and police. Initially my inspector asked for my passport but did not look at it, did a cursory shine of the back of François and walked away. In front my British partner was opening the door to his storage for the inspector. I think because we were waiting the inspector came back to me and asked me to do the same.

I got out of François to open the storage hatch for the inspector, when I got to the back I noticed that the bike rack was down, but I didn’t think anything of it, thinking it might have slipped down. I then opened the hatch and there was a person in there! He was a young guy of about 20 curled up on top of our electrical cords and chairs. The inspector yelled for help and in a few seconds there were five police and coastguardsmen at the back of François. They left the guy in there for a few minutes while they had a rather calm discussion in Greek about the situation. They also questioned me about what I knew about him. I was stunned. I told them we had been with the RV all day except about 40 minutes when we went to dinner, and when we left it was locked. But he must have accessed it while we were gone.

At that point I made the connection to the bike rack being down, it was quite hot, so we decided to leave the roof vents open on François so it wouldn’t heat up too much when we went to dinner. I explained that to the police, and that he must have used the bike rack to climb up on François and enter thru the air vent on the roof. He was skinny enough to do it. The storage where he was hiding can also be accessed from inside the RV by lifting the bed, so once he was inside he climbed down in there and lay quietly while we were waiting to board the ferry.

After some more discussion in Greek, they told the guy to get out of François, and he headed off around a corner unescorted. They had some more discussion in Greek, and now gave François a very thorough inspection. When they didn’t find anything else, they gave me a good natured warning about security saying that they could make me stay and appear in court to confirm that I did not know the person they found in the vehicle but they were not going to do that. All in all I was detained about 15 minutes.

When I told Ton about the incident she was startled of course, particularly as the guy had been in François with us for about 3 hours while we waited for the ferry. Before we boarded we did a thorough check of our stuff, and I looked at all of the locks and sky lights, he didn’t take anything or touch anything for that matter, and he didn’t do any damage to François.

The rest of the trip went as planned and the boarding and unloading process was slow but under control. We are now parked up at a nice Sosta in Italy with a wild travel story to tell in the future.

September 19, 2023 Igoumenitsa GR

You may be wondering why the top photo is of a toll both, and the answer is that as a gift on our final day in Greece we were passed thru all of the toll booths on our route for free. For reasons we were never able to figure out, every time we pulled up to a toll booth today, the gate went up and the toll attendant waved and said free! The cars in front of us were being charged, but we were free. Even the Patras bridge over the Straight of Corinth which usually costs €21 was free today. All together we saved about €80 in tolls. We finally came to the conclusion that the Greeks just really wanted us to come back!

The Patras bridge usually costs €21, it was free today.

We left the campground as late as we could because we had a lot of time to cover the four hours to Igoumenitsa. The ferry we are taking to Italy leaves at midnight and boarding is not until 10:30.

Our last meal in Greece, Gyros of course.

We killed some time at a Lidl stocking up on some of our favorite Greek groceries. We then filled up with diesel as fuel is about 10 cents per liter cheaper here than Italy. We finally showed up at the ferry terminal about 5pm and got our ticket. The agent told us that we would board about 10:30, so we had plenty of time to walk around town and get a meal. We took her advice but the nice part of town was about 2km’s away, and the only restaurant near the ferry terminal was pretty nondescript, so our final meal in Greece was not our most memorable.

I will cover the ferry ride tomorrow, we are really looking forward to the boarding process after our experience with the ferries to Crete. Also, this time for “security” reasons Ton has to go thru the pedestrian boarding while I drive on board.

September 18, 2023 Aigialeia GR

We are finally on the move after nearly a week resting and recovering in Nea Makri. Ton is still under the weather but she says she is starting to feel better.

Our day started by revisiting the RV repair center in Athens to get another water pump, it turns out that one of our faucets was not closing completely, causing the pump to run continuously even though the faucet was not dispensing water. This caused the pump motor to eventually burn out as they are not designed to run continuously. We had them install another pump and we were on our way by noon, short an additional €50, though no labor charge this time.

Ton loves the color and clarity of the ocean in Greece.

We escaped from Athens quickly and were shortly on the Peloponnesus peninsula, and the rest of the drive was a relaxing but expensive autoroute that paralleled the straight of Corinth.

The mountains of the Greek mainland across the Straight of Corinth from our campground.

We arrived at the campground about 3 pm and headed down to the beach to get some photos. For the first time on the trip Ton was in her element. We then returned to François for some relaxation and dinner before calling it a night.

September 17, 2023 Nea Makri GR

Today was spent resting and letting Ton continue to fight the bug that has her feeling under the weather. We are heading out for our ferry to Italy, but our departure will be a little more complicated than we would like.

Last night the new water pump that we had put in on Friday stopped working, so we will begin the day by heading to the repair shop to get that sorted out. Fortunately, it is more or less on the way we would be taking to leave the city so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Once we get our water pump going again, we will be heading in the direction of Patras for the day. It is about half way to our departure point for the ferry.

September 16, 2023 Nea Makri

Today is short and sweet. Ton is fighting a pretty nasty bug so she spent the day in bed. I took a couple of short walks to the grocery. We are probably going to take another day to make sure she is fully recovered before we head out of Nea Makri. The cover picture is the interior road of the campground, because that is about all we did today.

September 15, 2023 Nea Makri

Today was busier than planned. Last night when I went to brush my teeth there was no water. We had a problem with the water pump, the first thing I needed to do was check the fuze as hopefully that was the problem. The first issue was I didn’t know where the fuze was. So I dug out the owners manual, which was only in German. I had looked at the owners manual for the truck from Fiat in the past and it was in English so I had assumed the owners manual for the camper was also in English. After looking thru the manual I realized I was not going to understand anything. I checked to see if there was an owners manual in English on line, but I couldn’t find one. So I went to one of our neighbors who was German and asked if he could translate it for me, but it turned out he didn’t speak English. But, luckily he owned an RV business in Germany so the next thing I knew he was troubleshooting the water pump for me with a running commentary in very technical German. After spending about 30 minutes looking things over (and showing me the location of the fuzes and the waterpump) he looked at me and said ze wasser pump est kaput!

I spent the rest of the evening looking at my options to get a new water pump, we already new that there was only one dealer for our RV in Greece and it was located over 500 kilometers away. There was a dealer near where we would land in Italy, but that meant going without water for 5 days in 90 degree temperatures which was not ideal. I remembered in the spring we had talked to a repair place near Athens on the phone, so we put our hopes in them.

After tossing and turning all night worrying about the water pump and fighting with the mosquitos that had invaded the interior of François during the water pump diagnosis, I was up bright and early. At 8:30 I went to a nearby garage to get a fuze to double check that it was not a fuze problem, as I didn’t want to drive 40 kilometers to a dealer only to have them slap a 50 cent fuze in and send me on my way. After inserting a new fuze we still had no water.

Promptly at 10 am I called the repair shop and they did not answer their phone. I tried several more times and no answer. On a whim I sent them a text and less than a minute later I got a request for a picture of the water pump. After looking at our water pump they said they had one that would work. I asked if we could come over this morning and did not get an answer. So after a couple of more texts about coming that went unanswered I told Ton that we would just go.

After a drive into the heart of Athens, that went very smoothly we showed up and they were able to get us right in. An hour later we were on our way back with a new and bigger water pump.

Ton is a bit under the weather so that was enough adventure for her today. The rest of the day was spent napping in François. So today no photos.

September 14, 2023 Nea Makri GR

We had a restless night. The daytime temperatures have been in the mid to high 80’s so even with all of the windows and the door open it is taking François a while to cool down, we are still jet lagged, and on top of that a few mosquitos managed to penetrate our perimeter so we spent part of the night hunting mosquitos with mixed success.

We finally got going mid-morning and headed over to the weekly market in town. It was quite a big market, and we enjoyed looking at the local foods on display. Ton stocked up on some fresh local vegetables, I would try to google the appropriate Greek questions, and would be greeted with a bemused “what do you want” in English every time, but they usually got a kick out of my poor attempt. When we were done it was quite hot so we headed back to a toasty François for an afternoon nap.

One of the cats that have adopted us. He loves anchovies, and was a little disappointed with the sausage piece I gave him at dinner, after waiting a minute or so for an anchovy he decided he would go ahead and eat the sausage, but not without a look that told me he was disappointed.

We headed into town to look for dinner, but it was so hot we decided that a salad would be good. So it was back to François for a nice cold salad, before turning in early.

September 13, 2023 Nea Makri GR

Today we slept in fighting jet lag. When we finally got going around 11am we had to do all of the exciting stuff it takes to get going on this trip. Part of the reason we have adopted Nea Makri as our Greek hometown is that it has 4 grocery stores withing walking distance which makes Ton very happy, it has other stores and some nice waterfront restaurants we can use for entertainment while we get over jet lag.

Today we visited 2 of the grocery stores to get our initial food stocks, and one of the banks to get some Euros. Besides that Ton spent some more time organizing and I tried to stay out of the way, and get the refrigerator to cool down. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it, it is just hot outside and it is struggling to get ahead of the heat and cool down. I tried a couple of tricks I learned on line, so hopefully it will cool down more overnight.

We have been in this campground long enough that one of the kittens we fed on our first visit, brought her kittens by today for us to meet, and I’m sure she hopes we will feed them. I’m sure we will not be able to resist.

Our plan is to spend the next few days getting over jet lag, and completing stocking up for the trip. Once we get our legs under us, we will be heading North as we have a ferry ride to Italy coming up on September 20.

September 12, 2023 Nea Makri GR

We took a bit of a gamble today and it worked out. We usually book a hotel for the first night in case there are problems with the flight. We do not have to worry about having a place to stay on arrival if we arrive in the middle of the night. This time hotels near the airport in Athens were really expensive. Our flight was scheduled to arrive in Athens at 4:30 pm and the storage where we kept François over the summer said they could pick us up at the airport up to 6 pm. From the airport to our adopted Greek hometown of Nea Makri is about 30 minutes, so if all went well with flights we would be at the campground at around 6:30 pm. If things went badly we would be paying an exorbitant hotel bill for something last minute near the airport.

In this case everything went to plan, our flight from Portland departed 20 minutes late, but arrived in Amsterdam on time. Our flight from Amsterdam departed 25 minutes late, but arrived at Athens only 10 minutes late. Our bags appeared promptly at baggage claim, and the great folks from Clio Parking scooped us up 10 minutes after we had our bags. When we arrived at the parking François was sitting there ready to go and freshly washed.

We have left François with Clio for long term stays twice and they have been the epitome of customer service. They are really not looking for more motorhome storage business, but if you need long term storage in Athens, try to convince them to take your motorhome, you will not regret it.

The final step was driving the 20km’s to Nea Makri Camping and the traffic was smooth and relatively light so that we arrived at 6:30, exactly as planned. Our old friend Stavros guided us to our spot, and then Ton spent the next two hours arranging François for our next adventure. Finally at 9pm we settled in for the night to see how jet lag was going to effect us for the night. Hopefully it will not be too bad.

June 6, 2023 Portland OR

The flights home were completely uneventful this time which is always great. This trip we visited two new countries for us in Romania and Bulgaria. Crete was a high light for both of us. Both Romania and Bulgaria were very interesting as they are not as far advanced in developing as other countries. On the whole we have enjoyed traveling in the Balkans as there is a lot to see, but the crowds are not as big.

We are still undecided about our fall trip. We need to end it in Amsterdam, but we are still deciding whether to start out by going east into Turkey, or head towards Corsica and Sardinia by ferry. Stay tuned to see what we decide.

June 5, 2023 Athens GR

Today was our last day in Greece for this trip. We had pretty much prepared everything the day before so the only chores in the morning were disposing of the waste water and shutting down all of the systems on François.

The campground cats enjoying a meal of Lidl cat food. The white cat was a cute kitten last year.

Since we had emptied the fridge I went to Lidl first thing in the morning to buy some pastries for breakfast. We now have a tradition of providing a final meal to the cats in the neighborhood, so I also bought a few tins of cat food as we didn’t have the leftover meat that we usually give them.

The drive to the airport storage was uneventful. We spent the last day in the airport Holiday Inn which is not particularly close to the airport, and not accessible by local roads. It is effectively a rest area off of the tollway without restaurants or access to a town, a very weird location.

June 4, 2023 Nea Makri GR

This is the last night in François this trip. Today was spent preparing to leave. As usual Ton does most of the work packing the suitcases, organizing the cupboards, and taking inventory. I spent some time cleaning up the outside of François and the storage area.

Ton liked this dying tree on the beach at Nea Makri.

We were done with everything about 1 pm so we decided to take one last pass thru Lidl just in case. We ended up buying a couple of cold drinks and some cat food to feed the cats in the campground. We have spent more time here than at any other campground and have gotten to know the cats so we decided to give them a little treat.

Interesting wild flowers near the beach.

The feeding of the cats went about how we expected. There was some snarling, but eventually all of the cats left with a full stomach including a new kitten who arrived since we were last here.

We ended the day by walking down to Nea Makri for dinner in our favorite restaurant there. When we were last here we could stroll on up at anytime and have our pick of tables as the season hadn’t started. Today the entire beach area was packed and all of the restaurants were full. We did get a table at our favorite place and enjoyed a last good Greek meal until we return in September.

Our last meal on the trip. Note the plate of lemons in the center. Surprisingly we made a pretty good dent in it before we were done.

June 3, 2023 Nea Makri GR

Another short post today. We drove 420 km’s to our unofficial Greek hometown of Nea Makri. The drive was uneventful but extremely expensive. Today we paid the most we have ever paid in tolls. We were reeling with the cost when we realized that the drive we did in 5 hours would have probably taken 9 hours on the regular road that runs parallel to the toll way. So the question comes down to how much is 4 hours worth. After talking it over we decided it was worth it, barely.

Another shot of Mt. Olympus from the gas station where we filled up before departure.

We have settled down in the campground. Ton could not help herself and fed the cats here. We have been attached to a couple of them who were kittens when we first visited. Now they are full grown cats, and it looks like one of them is a mother herself.

June 2, 2023 Litochoro GR

It’s a short one today. When we checked in we noticed that they had a big Maytag commercial washer, so we washed all of our bedding. Then rigged our clotheslines all around François and dried them. Ton spent a chunk of the day giving François a good cleaning, and I mostly just tried to stay out of the way. In the evening we walked down to the very calm Aegean sea and sat there a few minutes before heading back up to relax for the evening. The cover shot today is Mt. Olympus which is about 15 km’s from here.

Heading down to the beach for an evening sit down.

June 1, 2023 Litochoro GR

Today we are camped between the Aegean Sea and Mt. Olympus in Greece. It was another day of long driving, but today was not that stressful, and we ended up at a beautiful seaside campground.

The mountain stream near our campground this morning.

Last night we were parked about 50 yards from a beautiful alpine river that was rushing by. With all of the rain the region has been getting the river was really running hard and I had visions of flash floods during the night and I actually got up once to check that the river was still in the banks. The sound of the water was really loud as it passed thru the rapids right next to where we were sleeping.

The beach at the campground reminds me of the commercial for Corona Beer with Snoop Dog.

Our goal today was to cover some more ground towards Athens. We had gotten rid of all of our Bulgarian Lev at the monastery and asked the campground owner if we could pay in Euros. He asked for €23 and we could not come up with €3 in coins so we gave him 30. He gave us 15 Lev in change, after all we are in Bulgaria. Our plan was to stop at the last exit in Bulgaria to spend our 15 Lev and buy gas at is much cheaper in Bulgaria than Greece. Unfortunately, we missed the last exit and the border was on us before we realized it. So we still have our 15 Bulgarian Lev (about $7), and we ended up buying expensive Greek gas.

The rest of the drive was uneventful and we are happily parked up. Ton told me she is very happy to be back in Greece the land of sun, sand and sea!

May 31, 2023 Rila BU

After two days of heavy driving we slowed down today. Rila Monastery was one of our must see destinations when we planned our trip. On the way into Bulgaria we skipped it to get to Sofia, and planned to make it our last stop in Bulgaria. So we carried out that plan today.

Across the street from the Aire was a car wash. The neon pink soap is unique to Bulgaria.

On our way out of town we stopped across the street to give François a bath. For some reason Greece does not have the automatic car washes that you see in most countries, so we took advantage of it to give François a good bath.

While I was dealing with Officer Petrov on my side of François, Ton took these pictures of these beautiful wild flowers out the other window.

Driving down the A3 we were as usual one of the slowest vehicles on the autoway, but as we were leaving a tunnel a police officer gave us the signal to pull over to the side. Officer Petrov introduced himself and told me we were speeding in the tunnel because the speed limits in tunnels are 90. He then told me we were going 107, which didn’t seem right as I had the cruise control set at 97 (which I recognize is more than 90, but three cars had passed us in the tunnel). After checking our documentation he told me he was going to let us go with a warning. I had read that the Bulgarian police like to pull foreign vehicles over to check the documentation and this seems more likely as the reason we were flagged. Once he found our documents in order he sent us on our way. By the way, Officer Petrov was extremely professional throughout the encounter.

The entrance portico to the church at Rila Monastery.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. After we parked we decided we needed to hustle as it looked like rain.

The entry door with biblical scenes around it.

The monastery is in a beautiful mountain setting. It was founded in the late 900’s by a monk who is the patron saint of Bulgaria. When Bulgaria was in the Ottoman Empire Rila Monastery was the center of the Christian faith in Bulgaria. It is one of the most visited places in Bulgaria, and is very important cultural heritage site to modern Bulgarians.

The church and the bell tower/watch tower in Rila.

Today the majority of the visitors were elementary school students. Like most kids of that age, the beautiful buildings were secondary to the cool snacks available on site. The cool snack today was a sweet bread called Monks Bread. For 1 Lei it was a good bargain and I bought one and it was delicious. I shared a bite with Ton and to my surprise she really liked it and asked me to get another for her. But when I got back a couple of classes of students had beat me there so we could not get another.

The monks bread (think donut) was very popular with the elementary school kids.

The exterior walls are massive and were originally developed for fortification. These days they have been converted into rooms for the monks. Some of the rooms have now been converted into a hotel which would be an interesting place to spend a night.

The monastery is one of the most beautiful buildings we have visited in the Balkans. I think we were lucky because it was not too busy so we got to take our time going thru and really enjoying the art.

This monk looks like he is deep in prayer, but he was actually deep asleep.

The rain was coming so we headed down to our campground which was located a couple of kilometers away. As we were negotiating the last couple of hundred meters to the campground we came across a log truck loading. We got to see them use the lift on the back of the truck to load the last couple of logs before the log truck driver and I did some fancy driving so we could squeeze by each other.

We enjoyed watching the loader position the logs on the truck.

When we arrived we were the only customers on site. Right after we settled the skies opened up and we ended up spending most of the rest of the day hunkered down in François listening to the rain.

The river next to the campground is really running hard due to the heavy rain they have been getting here.

We had another encounter with a snake today. We were standing next to François looking at the river when Ton looked down and jumped. At her feet there was a small snake. After all of our years camping we had never encountered snakes, but we have had two snake encounters in Bulgaria!

A painting depicting hell from the monastery.

May 30, 2023 Sofia BU

We are in full on road warrior mode now. We spent last night debating how many kilometers we could do in one day. After our experience with Bucharest we needed to get a chunk of miles (I know I am mixing measurements) in, but we didn’t want to kill ourselves. After a lot of back and forth and testing distances on Google Maps we settled on Sofia.

The main reason Sofia won out in the choice of todays destination.

We settled on Sofia for two reasons, it wouldn’t be a killer drive, only about 320 km’s (230ish miles), and Ton wanted to revisit a restaurant there. Ton rarely wants to revisit a restaurant when there are so many new restaurants to be discovered, but she very fondly remembered Restaurant Hadjidraganovite in Sofia. So Sofia became the destination for the day.

Our main motivation for Sofia, The Mixed Grill for two.

The drive to Sofia was on roads a little rougher and busier than we would have liked. That is what happens when distance is your goal, things like traffic start to bother you in a way they don’t when your goal is a place. The last two days have driven that home to us as I have been more frustrated than ever with the road conditions, and the antics of the drivers, things I usually take in stride.

We arrived in Sofia around 2:00 after about 5 hours on the road, so on the whole the drive wasn’t terrible. We headed right into town to have a very late lunch/very early dinner. After our lunch/dinner we weren’t in the mood to explore much, a function of todays goal being distance not Sofia. So we jumped on the subway and headed straight back to François to rest.

The subway platform in Sofia. Fortunately the signs have the place names in Roman letters also.

May 29, 2023 Koshov BU

Today was a long day of driving. We planned on six hours, and it turned into 8. We knew that this trip was going to have a couple of days of long driving because we could not come up with a loop. The excursion into northern Romania was worth it though.

The early morning fog was still in place when we were leaving Sighisoara. The fog made a kind of rainbow, I guess a fogbow.

The early part of the trip went very well, and we were making better time than I thought we would. I was optimistic that the day would not be the slog we thought it would be and then we hit Bucharest. Bucharest is now our European city with the worst traffic having surpassed Antwerp. The ring road is a single lane with periodic strangely designed intersections that have no visible control system, no roundabout, no lights, basically a free for all, right of way goes to the biggest, fastest, and most aggressive vehicles. For a short while it is kind of entertaining, but the fun factor fades fast.

Some countryside from the side window of François.

On top of that Greta Garmin for the third time on the trip decided to direct us to a road that does not yet exist. Whoever did the programing for Garmin 18 months ago when we bought our European card decided that freeways under construction could be used. Three times she has directed us to freeways that were under construction when she was programmed, and from the looks of things will still be under construction for several more years. As a result of the bad traffic, and the bad direction from Greta we had to put her in timeout, and break out Google maps on the phone. My guess is that Greta cost us an extra 90 minutes of very stressful driving in Bucharest. The result is that it took us about 2 1/2 hours to navigate 30 miles around Bucharest.

After Bucharest a sign we were very happy to see.

We did eventually escape Bucharest and ended the day at one of our favorite campsites of the trip, overlooking a beautiful gorge in a national park. Our neighbors are an Australian couple who also bought their van from Eurocampingcars in France. It is a small world.

May 28, 2023 Sighisoara RO

Sighisoara is another Saxon city in Romania. It is one of the most well preserved medieval cities in Europe as war mostly has missed it over time. Also its modest size and relative remoteness means that industrialization and communism did not change the city much either.

One of the gates of the city dating back to the 1600’s.

It is now very much on the tourism trail for Romania as it is very nicely preserved and a good size to visit in one day. But of all of the places that we have visited on this trip it felt the most touristy. There were more souvenir shops than we have seen in other places. Today the tourists though were mostly Romanian.

A cute flower display based on bicycles.

The old city is built on a prominent hill and most of the wall is still intact. There are 9 towers remaining of the original 12, and they are all in good shape. So you get a good sense of the city during its heyday in the middle ages.

The clock tower with the first glockenspiel we have seen in the Balkans.

They also are capitalizing on Dracula. Many people believe that the author of Dracula, based the character on a historical figure from the 1400’s known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was actually born in Sighisoara but only lived here until he was about 4 years old, so he did most of his impaling elsewhere. Nonetheless their are several restaurants, and museums devoted to Vlad and Dracula.

Vlad the Impaler as he appeared well after leaving Sighisoara when he was 4 years old.

The city historically has been a mix of Germans, Romanians, and Hungarians and has passed back and forth between the Austro-Hungarian empire and Romania. That mixed heritage is reflected in the three churches in the city, one Lutheran for the Germans, one Orthodox for the Romanians, and one Catholic for the Hungarians ( and a few of the Germans.)

The Lutheran church had the best real estate at the highest point in the city.

There were several weddings going on today and we saw wedding parties at both the Orthodox and Catholic churches.

The Catholic Church next to a park with a statue of a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 against the Hapsburg empire.

The large Orthodox Church near the river.

Climbing down from the top of the town we came upon a long covered staircase. The Lutheran Church used to also have the main school in town next to it. The covered stairway allowed the students to quickly climb the hill to the top of the town no matter the weather.

The covered stairway has over 150 steps in it.

Having come down the stairs from the top of the town we were both looking for a little break. We spotted a sign for a wine shop that looked like it had an interesting cave, and we stuck our head in. The shop was beautiful and the owner asked us if we wanted to try a tasting of the local liquor called Pilinka. We both said sure without asking the price. The Pilinka was excellent but the cost shocked us both. He did tell us the cost after we had agreed and before he served it, but neither one of us wanted to lose face so we sat down. For what we paid for 5 shots of Pilinka each, we could have had a nice 3 course meal with a glass of wine.

Our samples of Pilinka. We should have asked the price first. But they were quite good.

When we came out of the wine cellar we noticed that the afternoon thundershowers were starting to build again. We figured we had about an hour before they would hit so we decided to head back to François.

We weren’t in a hurry and Ton had heard there was a Lidl near the campground so we headed there. Just as we returned to François there was some spattering of rain. We sat inside and listened to thunder all around us, but as often happens with thunderstorms it was probably raining heavily all around us, but we only got a few drops where we were.

One of the watch towers from the city walls. Each of the towers was funded by one of the trade guilds in town. This one was the shoemakers tower.

Our plan was to head back into town in the evening after the rain blew thru. But once we got back into François we both got comfortable and the walk back into town never happened.

Looking over the lower town and the valley from the top of Sighisoara.

May 27, 2023 Sighisoara RO

Today was a driving day. We had one more site on our tour of Romania we wanted to get to. When I punched Sighisoara into Google Maps to look at options it said 250 km’s which is not bad, but then I noticed it also said 4.5 hours, which is not good. The majority of the trip was thru mountains, and villages so Google was predicting an average speed of just over 50 kph, which meant for us it was going to take about 6 hours given we never hit Googles average speed.

Ton always provides me with way more pictures than I can use, since today was a driving day, here are some beautiful pictures from Romania.

We were up early for us and noticed that the Spanish Motorhome Tour we have been sharing the campground with was already gone. They had left about 7:30 am. This was the second time we had shared a campground with them and the second time they had departed before 8 am. Ton and I decided that we are not cut out for group touring of motorhomes!

A house in one of the villages we drove thru.

The drive over was thru truly beautiful mountains, and probably 150 kilometers of villages. The roads in Romania, even the major ones do not by pass the villages like in many parts of Europe, and since the speed limit in villages no matter how small is 50 kph it makes for a slow drive. The Romanians deal with this problem by ignoring the speed limit. We are frequently passed in the villages by cars going about 90kph, and today we were passed twice by semi-trucks in villages, despite the fact that I was right on 50 kph.

It was a long drive, but we had set our minds to it and we ended up enjoying the day. We saw a lot of interesting things happening in villages. Two of the mountain passes were absolutely stunning, and even the thunderstorm we navigated for about 20 minutes broke up the monotony.

A home that appears to host artists painting scenes from the countryside in Maramures.

We arrived in Sighisoara about 3:00 pm right to plan, and it is a beautiful city. Our plan was to settle in, get a late lunch/early dinner and go for an evening walk. About an hour after we arrived the electricity went out in François. As I was walking around trying to find the problem, our Belgian neighbor came out and said his was out too.

A larger than normal wooden gate leading to what we think is a hotel.

Eventually we learned that the electricity was out in the whole town, something to do with all the thunderstorms around us, so Ton joined Gus and Agnes outside and we chatted for awhile. They eventually invited us to join them and the chatting continued until 10 pm, so no evening walk.