Maramures Walking Tour

Maramures Walking Tour – 10 days

Day 1 Cluj Napoca – Breb

You land in Cluj Napoca around 1.00pm. Your met at the airport with a sign showing your family name and helped with your bags to the jeep or people carrier depending on how many of you are in your group. Cluj Napoca Airport is brand new and easy to use. The car is 50 meters from where you leave air side and it takes no more than half an hour to clear your bags and be on your way. As Romania is now in the EU passport control is simple and quick.

You drive out into the Transylvanian countryside and head for Breb, our little village in the heart of Maramures. You will travel through some very remote parts of Transylvania and after climbing the Carpathian mountains, drop down into Maramures and our little word. You will arrive in time for dinner and you bags will be taken to your villa where you will stay they whole week.

Day 2 Cluj Breb

Today is the one day we don’t do an organised walk. You can take a walk around Breb or just relax and and take it all in. You are now on holiday after all. Lunch and dinner is in the villa. Alcohol is included with the meals in Breb. We have a simple drinks cabinet of beer, sometimes some local wine and a collection of spirits and always a good supply of G&T’s. We have started to make our own Apple brandy in Breb and so you will be able to try our various mixtures of apple branding in pine syrup, blueberries, and various other cocktails Penny is experimenting with.

Day 3 Breb Salbatory and Church

They say if you work on the one day a week that your not supposed to work ( and go to church instead) you will get struck by lighting or… worse. If you fly out on a friday which is what most people do so you get two weekends away, on day three it will be Sunday. Every one in the village gets dressed up and goes to church. Some don’t go to church, but they still get dressed up. After church it is the one day where young respectable girls can be seen down in the village bar. Every one is on parade and you get the feeling the camera crews will arrive soon to make the movie. When you realise they are all dressed in traditional cloths, not for show, not for you, they just dress that way you realise you are somewhere different. Breb is one of the most traditional villages in Maramures, which is the most traditional area left in Romania. Hence why we live here. It’s a great day for mingling with the locals and playing cards in the bar. Breakfast lunch and dinner are served in the villa on this day. We start our walk to meet every one coming out of church, we then walk around the village and stop in the local bar to take it all in carrying on up the hill to visit some locals as it is the day to drop in and say hello.

Day 4 Sighetu and Sapanta (The Merry Cemetery)

Now you’ve had a good rest and met half the village if your the sociable type, it’s time to go out and explore Maramures. We go to Sighetu and take a walk around the town and go to the peasant museum.

After lunch we head out to the Merry Cemetery at Sapanta. It’s about as touristy as it gets in Maramures and you might even see a coach full of package holiday tourist here, but it’s worth the trip to explore the cemetery and read all the gory stories of how people died and the funny stories as well. There are a good selection of souvenir shops here that sell traditional crafts but we recommend, if you don’t mind to buy goods from Breb, direct from the locals. Hard currency is scarce in Breb and so any money the locals can earn to buy the few things they need on market day that they cannot make them selves goes a long way. After the Merry Cemetery we visit the tallest wooden structure in Europe. A new monastery that is being built a few miles away. It’s a great place to relax and let the kids charge around playing hide and seek in the huge wooden structure or to just sit and take it all in. Dinner is at the villa in Breb.

Day 5 & 6 Day off days

As we are a small family business, we can be very flexible on what we do with our guest; by now we will have an idea of what kind of walks you would like to do we will plan these two days with you depending on your fitness and length of time you like to walk. We can do walks straight out of the village or we can drive to surrounding villages and explore them. It’s up to you or you can leave it up to us and we’ll take you out exploring. There is the whole village of Breb to explore and the mountain that rises up and beyond the village. Breakfast lunch and dinner and alcohol are all included on these day but only in the village.

Day 7 Market day, walk to Serb and Budesti

We leave the village as early as we can, it’s market day and the earlier we get up the better the experience. We drive into Ocna Sugatag and have a look around the market stalls, see what animals are for sale and say hello to people from the Breb and the surrounding villages. On the way back from the market you are dropped off by the road side and you walk with the villages across the fields and down into the village of Serb. Here you will see the old wash house were people still wash their rugs in the stream. There is a wool threshing machine that is sometimes in used depending if any one has any wool that needs cleaning. It has wooden pistons and is prehistoric, but still somehow working. You then carry on your walk to Budesti and back round to Breb in time for dinner at the villa depending on how many times Penny has stopped to say hello to someone she knows and how much Holinca ( apple brandy) you are offered by them.

Day 8 Walk to the Crow’s nest

We build up to this walk, its the crow’s nest at the top of the mountain above the village. We drive half the way and take the mountain trail up to the top. we take a local guide with us as there are sheep dogs in the area and local knowledge is needed to communicate with them. On the way down we visit the sheppard’s in their sheep station and chat for awhile before heading down the valley to Breb. It’s a long day out but a rewarding walk. If you are not fit enough to do this walk as there several hundred meters to climb, we can arrange a different walk that is on flat ground that is just as interesting. All you need to to is let us know and we will arrange walks that suit your interests and level of fitness.

Day 9 Breb – Cluj

It’s your last day in the village, you need to be out of your villa by 10.00am to let the cleaners get in and do their thing. You have lunch in Breb and then head off through the Carpathian mountains with your driver to back to Cluj for the night in one of our partner hotels. Dinner is included in the hotel that your staying in, right in the center of Cluj. We can provide you with details on where to go out in Cluj or you can go to the theater, but these are not included in the tour.

Day 10 Cluj Airport

The wizzair flights leave at 8.00am so it’s an early start. A taxi will arrive for you at 6.00am and take your directly to the airport so make sure you have breakfast before you leave they taxi will drop you outside of the departure hall and off you go!

The cost of this tour including three meals a day and alcohol whilst in the village of Breb, all entrance fees for exertions shown in the itinerary above and all transfers and hotels are included The price is £650 per person based on a minim of 4 people traveling. As there are fixed costs for the transfers and guides, if your group size is two or three people we need to charge you and extra 10% per person. Unfortunately we cannot give discounts for children who need their own bed and who will eat a meal at the dinner table. Very young children who don’t need a bed or won’t eat a normal dinner can travel at half the quoted price as long as the group size is 4 or over. To make a booking inquiry for this tour or any of the others please go to the Transylvania tours booking form. If you compare out costs with other tours we will look more expensive. But when you have read the small print you will see a lot of things are not included in other tours and you will be traveling with other people in your group. At Somewhere Different we only have your group on the tour with us. We look forward to seeing you in Breb next summer.

This post is also available in: Romanian