GEB reader “fjk” recently biked through Romania and Georgia and did an excellent job of showcasing his trip in Google Earth.
fjk and his friend visited Kutaisi, borjomi, Vardzia and various other cities. They recorded the trip via a Garmin 62s GPS unit, and then loaded all of the images into a single Google Earth file. It’s fairly large, at around 29MB, but it’s a fun file to explore in Google Earth. You can download that KMZ file here.
If you’re planning a trip to Romania and you’re a first time visitor looking for travel tips and what to visit, then here’s a list of the most important things we locals think tourists should know about visiting Romania. There are many interesting things to do in our country and we’re going to tell you everything!
On Romanian Friend you can book authentic and interesting tours and day trips all over the country with the best, handpicked guides, find lots of useful info to plan your trip and get help with planning your itinerary or creating a custom tour. We’re locals passionate about our country who want to help travelers discover the beauty of Romania while supporting responsible, local and eco-friendly tourism.
Travelling to Romania – our tip: the simplest, most convenient and reasonably cheap way of getting to Romania is a low cost flight: 6 low cost airlines fly on 7 airports in major Romanian cities from more than 70 locations in Europe. Tickets range from 40-100€ depending on how much planning ahead you do and flight time is usually between 1,5 – 3 hours. You can also travel to Romania by train from Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia or Thessaloniki or even from further away with changes. If you’re looking for an adventure, consider an Eastern European road trip or maybe something more relaxing like a boat cruise on the Danube River. Read more about travelling to Romania.
Getting around Romania might be a bit more challenging, but not necessarily difficult. We don’t have a lot of highways and travelling by car between major cities usually takes long hours due to high traffic on mostly one-lane roads (speed limit of 90-100 km/h). Almost all Romanian cities and even small villages have train stations but railway infrastructure is not the best and trains are sometimes unreliable, although they will get you to your destination reasonably cheap. For shorter distances (up to 200 km) consider a car or train, train or coach for medium (200-400 km) and internal flights for longer routes (Bucharest – Cluj or Timisoara). Visitors to Romania are well advised to have travel insurance before getting here. Have a look at our guide on getting around Romania.
- Weather, climate and when to visit Romania
Romania has a temperate continental climate with the regular four seasons still largely present. Summers (June-August) are hot with 33-38 C degrees, winters (December-Feb) are cold -20-0 Celsius while spring (March-May) and autumn (Sept-Nov) are unpredictable as ever: cold in the mornings and evenings (8-18 C), warm and sunny during the day (18-26 C). Average rain, no spontaneous floods or draughts. Morning frost in spring, thunderstorms in the summer, foggy in autumn and snowy and freezing in the winter. The best time to visit Romania is anytime between early April – end of October, if you decide to go on winter you need to take appropriate clothing, we recommend the alpaca clothing material so it can keep you warmer than cotton.
Our favourite time of the year to enjoy Romania is autumn: a superb array of gold, brown and red will cover the woodlands, hills and mountains in the countryside – it is a wonderful, peaceful and picturesque sight to see that you will definitely enjoy!
You can also view the embedded version on his website. It’s a great way to capture, re-live and share a trip like that.
Great work, fjk!