My wife, Carolyn, and I took a 7-night, customized tour through Romania, May 25-31, 2012. We normally don’t splurge like that, but the prices in Romania are very favorable.
The trip was arranged by Mr. Mircea Dumitru, Manager of Contur Travel (Piata Ovidiu 14 Bloc B parter, Constant¸a, 900745, Romania; phone +40 241 616 616, 619 777, fax +40 241 613 192, e-mail info@contur.ro).
For the two of us, the cost was €2,125 (near $2,633) for two nights in Bucharest at the Ramada Majestic; five nights in 3-star hotels (some better than others but all quite nice); transportation (including pickup and dropoff at the airport); all breakfasts, and two dinners.
And what dinners they were! One was in a winery and included tastings of sparkling wine. The other, with six courses and six matched local wines, was a private dinner in a beautifully restored farmhouse. Stunning!
We ate other dinners in our hotel dining rooms, sometimes with Liviu, sometimes not. They always were tasty. For lunch, we generally stopped at some restaurant along the road and had good sausages or soup.
We toured the fabulous Painted Monasteries of Bucovina, UNESCO World Heritage Sites for their rarity and beauty, as well as other places in Transylvania, Moldova and Wallachia, the country’s three provinces.
Our guide, Liviu Tudor, who speaks excellent English, is a good driver and has a wealth of knowledge. Mr. Dumitru’s English is quite good but, charmingly, not perfect; we had no problems communicating.
JOHN BAKER
Saint Charles, IL
