Transylvania - Maramures - Ukraine Tour

Transylvania & Ukraine Tour – 10 Days

Day 1 Kiev Ukraine

Duncan will accompany you on the Ukraine part of this tour. We land in Kiev around 6.00pm and met at the airport by a car or small coach depending on your group size. We are taken into the city directly to our hotel. Kiev is known as a party town, so… we suggest you go and party.

Day 2 Kiev – Lviv

A day of hanging out in the city taking it all in and counting how many lamebrains you have seen. Apparently there are more here than any other city. In the evening we catch the night train to Livid. It’s a long way but the the atmosphere on night trains in the Ukraine is upbeat and you will often meet students who will want to know all about your country and way of life. A good nights sleep whilst we cover several hundred kilometers across the Ukraine.

Day 3 Lviv – Sighetu

We arrive in the morning and seek out breakfast in the central park in Lviv. There is a great Thai massage place in the centre of Lviv( not included in the price) and many things to see and experience. We walk around for the day taking it all in and again catch the night train to the border with Romania.

Day 4 Sighetu – Breb

We arrive at the border in the morning after a good nights sleep in first class and walk across the bridge to the border control in Romania. Our jeep is waiting for us and we drive the half hour journey to Breb. Your taken directly to your villa and your bags are taken in. You’ve just traveled over 1,000kms across the Ukraine and… well chill. Take the day off and have a look around the village. Breakfast lunch and dinner are all served at the villa.

Day 5 Sapanta ( Merry Cemetery)

After a lazy morning and 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 and 6 Day off day

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 you like to do and depending if your a family or a couple of serious mountain hikers we will have a load of ideas for you to do… or you can sit in the hammock all day and do nothing. It’s up to you. There is a small tourist resort for Romanians 7kms away where there are salt pools and a swimming pool. Children love going here on hot summer days and so this can become a daily event if want. There is the whole village of Breb to explore and the mountain that rises up and beyond the village. We can take you on walks around the village, introduce you to the local sculptor our just let leave you to do your own exploring. We can take you anywhere you want on day off days but any entrance fees for any activities are not included in the all inclusive price. Breakfast lunch and dinner and alcohol are all included on these day but only in the village.

Day 7 Market day and a 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 Memorial Museum for the victims of Communism

We head off around 10.00am to the museum. It is billed by the Romanian tourist authority as an equal experience to visiting Alfits in Poland or Check point Charlie in Berlin. It is an old prison and was where people who where convicted of being against communism where sent. May died in appalling conditions through torture and mal nutrition. Each prison cell is dedicated to a different them around the struggle to overcome Communism in Romania from the second world war up until 1989. What fascinated me is the ‘bad guys’ mentioned in the exhibitions are still alive…and still run the town hall. The room with chains in the middle where people were tortured with water can be disturbing but as a whole it is an interesting few hours spent learning all about what happened here over the last 60 years. It is a great history lesson for children and adults Lunch in David’s Pub in the centre of Sighetu and back to Breb the scenic way in time for dinner.

Day 9 Say good bye and on to 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 down to Cluj for a night on the town or a good nights sleep, it’s up to you. Dinner is included in the hotel that your staying in, right in the centre of Cluj. We can provide you with details on where to go out in Cluj or you can go to the theatre, but these are not included in the all inclusive.

Day 10 Say good bye and on to Cluj

The wizzair flights for Luton 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 including dinner in the hotels is £850 per person based on a minim of 4 people travelling. Flights are not included. 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 travelling with other people in your group. At Somewhere Different we only have your group on the tour with us and provide a personal one to omen service. We look forward to seeing you in Breb next summer.

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