Port of Origin: The Land of Pottery 🇷🇴

Sibiu was planned to be a short stop to break up the drive for Hunedoara to Brașov; our base for venturing to Dracula’s Castle (we’ll…the vampire Dracula’s castle) and the Transfăgărășan highway! However, we happened to stumble upon the Romanian Potters’ Fair that brought potters from all over Romania to showcase their products this weekend.

The kids got to use a potters wheel to spin their very own bowls with a little help!

We even got to spend a little bit of time painting a snow-mouse and butterfly basket pierces of pottery. It was a great experience for all of us to experience the pottery festival. That’s part of why traveling is so special, you never know what you will end of doing or what friendly people you will happen to meet.

After a few of hours (and several pounds of pottery added to our suitcases) we started to explore the city. Sibiu is nicknamed The City with Eyes because no matter where you go the houses are watching you. Legend has it they were built to frighten the people making them believe they were being watched! Or you could go with the more practical reason that they were designed by a local Sibiu resident to provide for ventilation in the attics. 😉

Next stop was the Lutheran Cathedral of Saint Mary. It was a beautiful church that contains 201 steps to the top of the tower; I know this because I counted all of them as I climbed to the top for this photo:

Nearby was the Bridge of Lies and with a name like that how could you pass it up. Turns out it was covered in scaffolding 😔 as are several things while travel. It was a neat bridge but the legends are the more interesting things; the most popular being that the bridge would collapse if someone tells a lie while standing in it needless to say we didn’t put the legend to the test!

We grabbed a late lunch before heading to the ASTRA Musuem of Traditional Folk Civilization. We had the Romanian Bulz and meatball soup with a doughnut for desert.

The ASTRA museum is an open air museum with traditional folk buildings and activities. We stumbled across a talent show where we got to watch some traditional dances. Then we grabbed some fresh squeezed lemonade and checked out the windmills and other buildings.