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I decided to skip Bucharest and head straight for Brasov. Brasov is considered the outdoor capital of Romania and can be a good base for Transylvania . Travelling with 1 year old baby makes travel planning very hard , so I decided to take it slow this time but still it was harder than I imagined.
The flight to Bucharest from London was 4.5 hours. We took the train from Bucharest Nord at 17.45 . The train ride was supposed to be just over 2.5 hours but due an incident on the way it was delayed by 5 hours. We reached our apartment well past midnight (there almost I broke wooden front door, finally someone from a nearby apartment came for our rescue).
I woke up early but had to waste couple of hours to find a local grocery store ( !for the baby , her mother forgot to bring salt). Nevertheless I left at 11 for “Libarty Bear Sanctuary”. This is almost in the middle of nowhere , between Rasnov and Zarnesti.
This is the largest brown bear sanctuary in Europe and run by a NGO. The bears here are rescued from their owners and most of them are subjected to exploitation and human cruelty.
There are many distressing stories , like one professional photographer blinded his bear with a needle so that it does not react to camera flash . Apart from bear there are wolf and deer as well. We finished our tour at 1.30 PM.
It was not easy to get a taxi from there , luckily that was the last slot of the day and the emloyees were returning to Brasov, so I got a free ride back to Brasov.
I reached back to my hotel early afternoon. Wanted to go up to the Tampa mountain by cable car , but the cable car was out of service. So roamed around the city for sometime and thus this was the end of first full day in Brasov
Flight: Bucharest has direct flight from London. Bus 783 / 780 has connection from airport to North Station and city. Train from North station takes 2.5 hrs to Brasov.
Liberty bear Sanctuary : http://bearsanctuary.com/libearty-bear-sanctuary . It has no direct public transport but transportation can be arranged from Rasnov /ย Zarnesti. Rasnov and Zarnesti has regular bus connection from main bus station and main bus station (autogara 2) is connected to city center by bus no 5 and 16.