Discover Romania’s Medieval Villages, Castles, and Vineyards by Bike

It was a heat June afternoon in Bucharest. Rays of solar bounced off the glass of Romanian-produced rosé that I’d held as much as clink above the desk. Over a soundtrack of loud home music, Martha Butterfield, a vivacious 84-year-old with wispy silver hair, giggled naughtily and shouted, “Stay your f@*#ing greatest life!”

She wasn’t giving a toast. She was studying from a chunk of artwork hanging on the wall of the restaurant, Casa di David. However the phrases would have made a becoming mantra for my weeklong biking journey with Butterfield & Robinson, an active-travel firm based by Martha, her brother Sidney Robinson, and her husband, George Butterfield. Pleasure of life has been B&R’s driving power since its early days within the Sixties planning bike journeys from Vienna to Paris.

Whereas Western Europe itineraries stay among the many firm’s hottest, George, 85, thrives on forging tracks in less-discovered corners of the world. Romania, with its Easter-egg-colored Saxon villages, Gothic castles, medieval citadels, and forested valleys, is his newest obsession. 5-star lodging is a function of any B&R itinerary; previously few years, the opening of properties like Bethlen Estates and Matca have allowed George to curate high-end journeys there.

I joined George, Martha, and 12 of their longtime shoppers on a newly created journey that began within the vibrant capital, explored wine nation, and resulted in Transylvania, a biking mecca. “Right here’s to per week of discovery,” George toasted, including with a wink, “Thanks for trusting me.” “I’d observe you wherever, George,” yelled Andy Gleeman, a B&R groupie on his eleventh journey.

It’s not all lengthy mileage and steep climbs—B&R journeys prioritize cultural immersion. To that finish, we started with a historical past lesson. After lunch, Raluca Şpiac, of the journey company Past Dracula, gave our group a glimpse of the nation’s Communist years, from 1948 to 1989. She took us to Ferestroika, an house turned personal museum that felt like a time capsule from the Nineteen Eighties, full with a pantry sparsely stocked with month-to-month rations. In distinction, the mansion of Romania’s infamous last Communist rulers, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, was the epitome of extravagance, with velvet- and silk-lined partitions, a gilded rest room, and a personal cinema.

“The Ceaușescu instances have been notably traumatizing,” Şpiac mentioned. “However Communism pressured individuals to be very artistic.” We witnessed that ingenuity in all the things from the edgy items on show on the Museum of Latest Artwork to the open-fire cooking that night at Bucharest’s Soro Lume restaurant. George ranked the meal among the many better of his life, and he’s traveled to 51 nations and owns a house in Burgundy, France. Palates don’t get extra discerning.

The phrase “By no means Underestimate an Previous Man With a Bicycle” was emblazoned on the again of George’s biking jersey, and I spent a lot of the following day watching it as I pedaled behind him. On this group of rugged B&R veterans, at 44, I used to be the youngest visitor. E-bikes allowed these of their 70s and 80s to breeze previous me on the rolling, vineyard-covered hills of Dealu Mare, one among Romania’s premier wine areas. Our 18-mile route led us to the tasting room of LacertA vineyard, the place we realized concerning the nation’s dark-skinned native grape, Fetească Neagră.

Grapevines gave strategy to the hovering peaks of the southern Carpathian Mountains as a van transferred us three hours northeast to Brașov, a medieval metropolis in Transylvania. It has a number of historic monuments—most notably one among Romania’s largest Gothic buildings, the Black Church—but in addition fashionable cafés and bistros. At One Soul, we ate tender duck breast wearing a deliciously funky sauce with pear and yuzu.

Over the following few days, as we cycled by way of pastoral landscapes speckled with bell-shaped haystacks and well-preserved Saxon villages, it felt like we’d traveled again to preindustrial instances. (The Communist years left a lot of the countryside undeveloped.) A slower tempo allowed me to watch shepherds tending their flock, girls fetching water from wells, and males steering horse-drawn carts. Ponies munched grass on the facet of the highway, and white storks nested atop farmhouses.

Transylvania is house to individuals from greater than a dozen totally different ethnicities, and folks we handed spoke each Germanic and Hungarian dialects. We might come throughout whitewashed Unitarian church buildings in a single village, then towering Gothic or Romanesque Lutheran church buildings within the subsequent.

On the fourth day, an hour-long journey led us to the village of Alma Vii, which was based within the thirteenth century. The fortified church and its surrounding stone partitions have been restored, and it now homes the Heart for Interpretation of Conventional Tradition. Inside, craftspeople braided corn husks for mats and made felt woolen slippers and hats.

A neighborhood restaurant, Belalma Rural, had introduced a farm-to-table feast to the middle, and we dug into hearty plates of sautéed lentils with oven-baked eggplant and ricotta-like cheese cheese. Palinc, a fruit brandy served with each meal, flowed freely, and the group teased me—the “teen”—after I abstained. “However that is the B&R means,” insisted Dick Balfour, one of many 5 legal professionals in our group.

Even with 20 to 30 miles of biking a day, I used to be nonetheless feeling the journey’s indulgences, so I’d dedicated to biking the optionally available 11 miles again to our lodge, Bethlen Estates, within the medieval village of Criș. That night, we’d been advised, the property’s super-talented chef could be serving us a seven-course dinner of up to date Hungarian recipes, like fermented cucumber with contemporary peas and smoked trout and dill, served with a chilly cucumber gazpacho. I meant to be hungry.

Bethlen Estates was the ancestral house of Depend Miklós Bethlen, who handed away in 2001. Since then, his widow, Countess Gladys Bethlen, has been meticulously restoring the property with ambitions of constructing it Romania’s most luxurious place to remain. I’d say she succeeded—not a element was missed, from the fresh-cut flowers in my bed room, which was warmed by a standard tiled range, to the handmade ceramics within the eating room.

Székely Land, the place we spent our last two days, is an space within the japanese Carpathians the place many ethnic Hungarians stay. The cultural distinctions made it really feel as if we’d cycled throughout a border: at our lodge, Zabola Property, a fairy-tale property in Zăbala owned by a Hungarian noble household, the workers spoke Hungarian, and we dined on dishes like goulash and chimney cake, a spit-cooked, sugar-dusted pastry we hadn’t been served wherever else.

My legs have been lastly beginning to really feel the miles, so after a day journey I wandered down a forested path (looking ahead to bears as I went) to Zabola’s sauna and chilly plunge. I returned to the terrace at sundown to search out our group clinking glasses of plum brandy. After per week with George and Martha, I left satisfied that the key to dwelling your greatest life is easy: good meals and good wine, mates, and a view.

A model of this story first appeared within the July 2025 difficulty of Journey + Leisure below the headline “Pleasure Trip.”