Pieces of advice on travelling to Romania
Romania is an eastern european country. If you consider coming to visit our country, there are several things you should know:
How to get to Romania
The best option to get to Romania is by plane. There are several low cost flight companies that operate mainly inside Europe and that have direct flights to Bucharest, the capital, and to other main cities of Romania:
There are also other companies like Lufthansa that fly with stopovers, and sometimes they offer better times and quotes.
Necessary documents to travel to Romania
For the European Union citizens the document necessary to travel to Romania is either the national ID, or the passport. For the rest of the countries, a list of necessary documentation can be accessed here: Foreign Ministery
Healthcare coverage in Romania
If you are an European Union citizen, before travelling, is advisable to ask in your country of origin, for the European Healthcare Card. You also need to be aware that there are limitations to the healthcare services that the card will cover in a foreign country. You can check more details on this matter on the webpage of the Foreign Ministery
For the citizens outside the European Union is recommendable to contract a private healthcare inssurance that will cover the medical expense, the hospitalization, medicine, transfers or repatriation of body.
Travelling infrastructure in Romania
Romanía has a surface of 238.400 km², which is more or less half the surface of Spain. Nontheless, its level of infrastructure for travelling is a lot inferior to the spanish one.
When planning your travel to Romania, you need to take into consideration that there are very few motorways and many of the national roads are in a bad state. That results into long transfers and extra time spent on the road.
How to move around in Romania
Once in Romania, you can move around the country using public transportation or renting a car, with or without driver. Let’s see the pros and cons of these 3 options:
- Public transportation: the train and bus network works really well and they are cost worthy, but the inconvenience is that it takes longer time to get from one point to another, as they have strict timetables. Generally there are not delays, but another disadvantage is that they have limited reach. For example, the transylvanian rural areas are both beautiful and interesting, but they are not served by train or bus. Viscri fortified church, one of the hidden gems of Transylvania, can be reached only by private transport.
- Car rental: there are a lot of companies that rent cars, either from the airport or from the main romanian cities. Conditions and costs are similar. What is advisable to do when renting a car is contracting a full casco inssurance. In Romania car driving is chaotic and risky and there are many car accidents on the roads. It’s also good to know that the gasoline cost is similar to the one in other European Union countries.
- Renting a car with driver: this might be the best way of travelling around Romania. If you are a group of at least 4 people, it is cost worthy to rent a 9 places minivan with driver. For larger goups, there are minibuses of 16, 20 places, or buses of 50 places. This service has the advantage that the driver knows the area and possible alternative roads in case of delays or traffic jams. The disadvantage is that most of the drivers speak only romanian and some, very little English. You also need to pay attention when closing the contract, to have everything included (for example parking fees, daily expenses of the driver, kilometers…). This will save you the surprise of finding out at the end of the tour there are suplementary expenses that were not included in the contract.
How to organise your trip to Romania
Given the vast territory that compounds Romania and the difficulty in moving around, we recommend you focus on one area, like for example Transylvania, or Bukovina, or the Danube Delta. You can do this either on your own, or by contracting one of our romanian tours in English.
- In a 5 to 7 days travel, we can taylor you a tour in Transylvania to get to know the hidden gems of this area. We reccommend a guided tour in Transylvania to get to know its culture, history and traditions. Or if you’re looking for hiking trips to the Carpathians, in our web you can find a great selection of tours that mix castles, medieval towns, gastronomy, culture, traditions and hiking in the Carpathians.
- In another 5 to 7 days travel we can get you to know the Danube Delta area and the Black Sea. This is one natural paradise still unknown, waiting to be discovered.
- In one other seven days tour, we can visit the northern part of the country, starting from Cluj Napoca to Maramures and also visit the Bukovina painted monasteries, part of the UNESCO Patrimony of Romania.
What’s the best time to visit Romania
The best period to travel to Romania is between May and September. It is recommendable to avoid, if possible, August, because of the crowds.
Last but not least, our true advice is that the most comfortable way of travelling around Romania is by contracting a guided tour in English. We are travel specialists for small groups that are willing to discover Romania. Here are some examples of English guided tours we taylor for groups travelling to Romania. If none of these tours suits you, we can make you a taylored tour