Romanian driving, though, terrifies me. Apparently lanes and speed limits are merely suggestions... The cool thing I noticed is that traffic circles usually replace intersections, and people in Romania actually know how to drive through them, unlike drivers in America in my experience. The driver was nice and pointed out stuff on the way, but I was holding on to my seatbelt for dear life in hopes that I would not die in Romania just to see a castle.
Peles palace was the first stop, and when we arrived, it became apparent that we were much more highly elevated than I'd anticipated, because it was really cold with remnants of snow/ice on the ground. It was beautiful, though. We took a lot of photos outside because inside, it was required to purchase a photography pass. Our student IDs got us in for 5 RON, which is less than $2. When we got called in for the tour, we were asked to put on slippers over our shoes, which was only a slight ordeal, because they were all either too big or too small for our feet. This caused us, particularly me, to have to shuffle around the palace in order for the slippers to not fall off. The palace was beautiful- much less gaudy than Versailles but still just as impressive. The woodwork was amazing. There was one room in which 14 types of wood were used, which was astounding because I don't even know if I could name 14 trees off the top of my head. We were shown the location of a secret passageway, which was super cool. There were beautiful paintings and wood inlays and furniture throughout the place. We only got to see the lower levels because we paid for the basic tour, but it was still an amazing experience. The guide was very informative, too, because he explained what things were for and where they were from and who used them and how, and it was clear that most of the things in the palace were kept in their original state/location, so we saw it how it actually was.Our driver made us an offer afterward. He said the for 30 euro, we could experience a traditional Romanian meal at a real Romanian countryside restaurant that normal Romanians go to, and we'd get there by horse and carriage. Matt flipped a coin to decide, because we were all kind of indifferent since we were planning to eat Romanian food in Brasov that night for dinner, but when the coin said yes, we later knew that it was the right decision.
The carriage ended up being a wooden cart. We all climbed in with the assistance of a milk crate and a small Romanian boy, who was also the driver of the horse. It was really funny and really cold. Seeing the countryside from a horse-drawn cart is way different from the inside of a car, and it took us 15 or 20 minutes to get to the restaurant from the point where the cart ride began.
We arrived at the restaurant, which was scenically located and family-run, I think. Everything was homemade. Our driver helped us order and explained that his normal job is actually to take tourists around Romania and help them experience the culture. He gave us his contact info, which I'll add to the bottom of this post once I get it from Caitlin, in case anyone reading this ever wants to go to Romania, because his prices are fair and he really was instrumental in making Saturday as much of an experience as it was. So anyways, first course is a soup. I got vegetable soup, because I don't like soup and I don't usually like meat, and I didn't like the soup, but the others liked theirs. Caitlin got pork and Matt, Laura, and the Taiwanese girl with us liked their meatball soup. The bread we were given was pretty good, too, but the weird thing was that sour cream is basically a butter substitute here. I hate sour cream, and barely managed to escape eating any of it, because our guide was kind of pushy with trying new food and eating everything the Romanian way. It's not a bad thing, but I have limits. They all tried sour cream on bread with salt, though, which was apparently the thing to do. For the main course, Laura and I tried homemade sausages with polenta. I disliked the polenta, which the guide described as "poor man's bread," but liked the first half of my first sausage, but it was really intense sausage and I couldn't eat more than that, even with pickles. Some of the others tried it so it wouldn't go to waste. I'm proud of myself for eating real Romanian food!! Dessert was apple cake, which was actually rather good except I couldn't finish it because I was feeling sickly from too much sausage. I'm so glad we did that, though. It would've been hard to order from a Romanian menu without the guide, and we wouldn't really have known what to do with all of the stuff like sour cream and pickles without him, too.
Our next stop was Bran Castle, which is the famous Dracula one. Vlad the Impaler is the actual historic Dracula, and my guidebook says it's "possible he defecated there once," but it really is inaccurate to call it Dracula's castle. It was cool anyways, though, although a bit kitschy. There was a not-so-secret secret passageway, and awesome views, and low doorways, and general coolness. Even without a photography pass, we took pictures because there was nobody there to tell us not to and absolutely everyone inside was taking photos like crazy. Afterwards, we wandered around the marketplace nearby and I bought a tacky t-shirt each for me and my sister, and Laura accidentally knocked over a shot glass, broke it, paid for it, and received a broken Dracula ashtray in return. 
Finally we went to Rasnov fortress. We were all getting tired by then. A tractor pulled us up the mountain to the citadel. Our guide actually went in with us this time, which was nice because he kind of gave us a tour. The top of the fortress had a 360 panoramic view of the area, and it was gorgeous. Rasnov had it's own Hollywood-style sign, too, which was kind of strange but still cool. My feet were so sore at that point from my blisters, and Laura looked ridiculous because her boots were warped to the point that one of her ankles looked broken when she walked. This is how we became the gimpy twins.
Back at the hostel, we took a nap before going to dinner. My guidebook had a restaurant in it called Pizza Pasta Venezia that we went to, and it was really good. I had some spectacular pizza, Matt had spaghetti, Laura got a HUGE calzone, and Caitlin ate some kind of pasta. I was glad we went there because it was delicious and fairly priced. Laura and I ate chocolate gelato for dessert.
On the way back to the hostel, Caitlin kept laughing at my pathetic attempts to walk. I probably did look ridiculous.
We hung out in the hostel lounge for a few hours. We eventually were joined by other people staying there as well as the hostel owners, who played darts and video games while listening to loud psychadelic rock. We didn't really interact with them much because we were having interesting conversations on our own, but they were all nice enough. On the TV, I caught a glimpse of something going down in Libya and attempted to ask the person watching it to tell me what they were saying, because I couldn't understand the Romanian, and he didn't understand what I was asking. We soon went back to our room and I got on the Internet to check the news and realized how awesome the Internet connection is there compared to the one here in Budapest. We didn't go to bed until almost 2 AM.
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