Day 71: Râmnicu Vâlcea la Pitești

Another late start as I’m still recovering a bit, and I’ve never been a morning person, let’s be honest. Could finally take advantage of the full breakfast buffet, and drink coffee, this time at an oddly-sophisticated-for-its-surroundings hotel in the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea. A few fruits stuffed into the pockets and we were on the road by 11AM.

We had two climbs in the first 30 kilometers today and then the remaining 40 kilometers would be vaguely downhill. The roads were quiet and nice for the climbs, again through small farms and fields where workers, including many women, moved hay with manual tools or their hands, sometimes aided by a horse. The roads were lined with stone fruit trees – plums, mirabelles, and some smaller dark purple fruit I don’t recognize – many so full that they are propped up with support sticks to help bear the weight.

The heat hadn’t waited for us to finish said coffees, so we were soaked and parched by the time we finished the second climb. We favored smaller roads as long as we could, including a stretch of gravel that we posited Street View isn’t allowed to drive on for risk of damaging equipment.

Some men standing on the banks of one of the two reservoirs we passed shouted something about “donde” and Philipp responded “Switzerland” – as many more farmers or workers are on the roads here than elsewhere we’ve been, we’ve gotten many more comments, most of which sound pretty friendly and encouraging, but it’s a bit shameful to travel and not be able to engage with the locals.

We committed the cycling sin of waiting until we were hungry to start looking for a market for some bread for a picnic lunch and were twice turned away – we’d gotten comfortable with our Balkan bread shop stops in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and neither Romania’s supply nor quality of bread shops seem to hold up. Luckily, we ran into a restaurant as soon as we re-joined the main road, a seemingly casual place whose inside revealed a wedding venue ready to host more than 50, complete with dazzling chandeliers, chair sashes, and 8-top tables, where some guests were eating their food as it was cooler indoors. Outside, we enjoyed some chicken and pork and a side of garlic (the waiter’s suggestion), which was probably five or more cloves’ worth of chopped garlic in a thin, perhaps milk, broth.

I was counting every clove on the busy final 10 kilometers to the hotel, when Philipp proposed a game of “everything to the left of the white line is lava” to make steering clear of the many cars, mysteriously including many Fords, a bit more interesting. Indeed it is a challenging game, as no spare budget was spent paving shoulders, but it passed the time and we made it to the Ramada in Pitești a little after four.

Feeling a bit nostalgic as tomorrow will be our last day of cycling – a long route into Bucharest where we’ll spend several days checking out the city and seeing a friend of Philipp’s before flying back to Zurich. A Ramada seems a very un-Romantic place to spend our last night on the road (chosen for convenience), but nothing like a little air conditioning and a full bar to keep us in good spirits.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5539km/47’596m
Rest days: 21
Route and Stats
Relive Video