For our last night in Serbia, we went out for a large Serbian meal with plenty of meat. Partly inspired by another thing that the Israeli bike tourer told us, which is that Serbians cannot be without at least 300g / 10oz of meat every day. Very stuffed at the end of the meal, we skipped ice-cream (!) and opted for a Serbian schnapps as dessert instead.
Today we would have a reasonable 60km / 37 miles ahead of us. The first ten kilometers were backtracking yesterdays route to the hydropower plant that is also a bridge across the Danube to Romania. After the Serbian passport control, where a Romanian cyclist told us that we should skip the line, because cyclists “have priority”, we cycled over the dam to the Romanian passport control and then we were back in the European Union.
We really hope that no bike tourer ever makes the mistake of opting for the Romanian side of the Danube to cycle our route from yesterday, because the roads are a lot busier. Thankfully, there was a shoulder that we could cycle on to let the dozens of big trucks pass us. On the many bridges, we cycled on the narrow sidewalks for safety. The traffic made the 14km to Orsova rather stressful and we could not really enjoy the otherwise magnificent views over the Danube.
In Orșova, we started to follow the Cerna river up the valley. We immediately started feeling very happy about our big pivot decision, because the valley looked beautiful and the traffic was much reduced compared to before.
We reached the entrance of the Domogled-Valea Cernei national park in Băile Herculane. There, we first got ourselves some local currency (Romanian Lei, singular is Leu), and then decided to do a picnic lunch and bought some bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, a small watermelon, and a salami-like sausage. At a bakery, we also tried to get some burek, but no dice, and Liz bought two small sausages wrapped in dough instead. I also got a Romanian pre-pay SIM card, which is cheap (5 EUR / 6USD) and easy, because unlike most EU countries, Romania does not require any ID to buy a pre-paid SIM. As a final shopping stop before lunch, we got some cold sugary drinks (weird flavors of Fanta, I did not finish mine).
We then cycled a bit further up through town to a small square with benches in the shade for the picnic. Across from the park and the Cerna, there was an old, decrepit sulfur bath building, that must have been glorious back in the day. The hot sulfur springs are the thing to do here, and Herculane is a big spa town. Further up, we passed a site where locals built two small sulfur pools for anyone to use, before the very hot (~50C / 120F) spring water runs into the Cerna.
The gradual climb up the last ~200m / 670ft of elevation brought many Romanian tourists walking along the road in swimsuits to their favorite hot springs along and swim holes in the Cerna. We also passed many stalls selling rubber slippers, swimwear, and towels. And we also got some beautiful views, making us even happier about the pivot decision.
We soon arrived at the motel for the night, a bit surprised at the late arrival time of 16.00, until we realized that Romania is in a different time zone than Serbia, and we went an hour ahead. Before dinner, we went for a quick dip in the Cerna.
The motel was quite basic and did not have WiFi, so we had a rather analogoue but pleasant evening and went to bed very early at about 21.30, against the logic of the mini-jetlag. We booked a nice glamp-site tent for tomorrow night, but learned that the road there would be mostly unpaved, so it would be good to be well-rested.
Total distance/elevation to date: 5192km/42’363m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video
The 1948 Tour 
Leave a comment