What better place to spend the 3 days of the 1st of December National Holiday than the Sibiu area. The Christmas market is usually gorgeous, the kids will love it and we’ll get some time to explore the nearby area.
To beat the traffic, we started early in the morning and we got through Prahova Valley in no time. We were lucky and we had some light rain on the way, enough to have the most beautiful rainbows between Sinaia and Busteni. Before noon, we were already in Fagaras.
Fagaras Castle is really nice and the museum was quite interesting for the kids. The highlight (for me) was the pot of coins discovered in the garden of a local in the 1970’s with more than 5000 silver coins from more than 27 distinct kingdoms or principalities from between 1300s to 1600s. It speaks a lot about the importance of the castle – which was a main stronghold in the area for Wallachia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Principality of Transylvania, Habsburg Empire – a lot of history in the almost 700 years of existence. The identity of the coin owners is left to imagination. Were they wealthy landlords? Thiefs? Did they bury the pot to hide it from Turks or Tatar armies? Were they killed on the spot?
The renovation work is still ongoing but it is almost finished and it definitely, even now, looks great and is really worth a visit.
We got going and we passed the entry for Transfagarasan highway – closed during the winter months – but still, we were able to spot from afar the amazing twists and turns of the road on the mountain slopes.
Sibiu looked gorgeous as usual, but even more so in the late afternoon light. The cathedral looks amazing, like a fairy tale castle, freshly restored, polished and beautiful.
The squares were packed with tourists (pandemic be damned!) and the nice little passages were being lit by yellow street lights. And the eyes of the buildings looking at you…
The Christmas Market was, as expected, amazing. I really think this is much nicer than the ones we experienced in Prague and Vienna. The kids loved it especially because we stuffed them with candies and hot dogs by the end of the day. We bought a bag of very cute looking homemade souvenirs and admired the lights projections on the hundreds of years old buildings, drank mulled wine and apple punch, and ate the traditional sausages with sour cabbage. One tip here is getting earlier, as soon as it gets dark – around 5pm, because at around 7pm the queue at the entrances is huge.
This is the first entry in a four posts series. Please check part two, part three and part four.