Slept in in our happy tent, under beautiful stars interrupted only by a glaring lamp from the toilets, which thankfully I only had to use once in the night. I spent the morning reading and stretching in bed, while Philipp thought up activities to vibrate the boards underneath our tent platform.
We slowly got ready, laughing at the Romanian kids from the nearby tent who were on their first “camping” adventure with their mom. They had brought binoculars and said they’d seen a fox, and this morning they may have caught a glimpse of an American reading her Kindle in the wild.
It was warm when we rolled out at noon, but immediately we were treated to our reward for yesterday’s effort: nearly 30km of beautiful gentle downhill through the gorge, with relatively little traffic due to what should be thought of as the dead-end nature of the road further up.
After our descent we sampled our first well-appointed Romanian bakery, which had some focaccia-based burek imposter that did not stand up to the Serbian or Bosnian, but for $1.50 for two and another $1 for a sweet cake topped with stiff cream and soaked in syrup, the price was right. Philipp used the restored telephone service connection to book an apartment for the night in Petroşani, and we were off on the final 20km.
Arrived around 3PM and met a gracious host Oana who helped us sort our plans for the next few days by comparing road conditions on the next two passes to what we’d been through, and even got us some laundry soap so we could skip the clothes-washing step at the end of the day.
Spent the afternoon planning out the next few days (read: getting scared for hills), and grocery shopped to make a simple spaghetti supper. The Alp part of the Transylvanian Alps begins in earnest tomorrow.
Total distance/elevation to date: 5318km/43’911m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video
The 1948 Tour 
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