Dacian King Decabalus on Romanian Shore of Danube
Saturday: We started to explore Romania today. We went with about half of our group on a 2 hour bus trip from Bucharest to Sanaia in the Carpathian Mountains. We had a local guide on board to explain the sights. It turns out that Romania was a kingdom, with a king and queen and princes and princesses for about 100 years until World War II. They had good kings who built roads and turned Bucharest into a capital that looked something like Paris at the time – a pretty good period for Romania according to the guide, who sounded like he would like to have the king back.
Our trip to the mountains was to visit the king’s summer palace called Peles. The king had relatives in Germany so the summer palace looked a lot like the same type of places in the Alps in Germany. He collected sword and shields and armor, so we got to go through room after room with armor from Europe and Turkey and India. Some pretty good stuff.
This area is really deep in the forest – people still go there to hunt. They have big black deer – not sure what those are – and brown bears. Our guide said there were 6000 bears in Romania – more than anyplace else in Europe except Russia. Outside the summer palace there is a prominent “watch out for bears” poster. I think they mean business.
We didn’t run across any bears and got back to Bucharest in time for dinner.
