You are wondering now how Dracula came into the picture aren't you? Me too! Well I guess the author, Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula wanted to find a real scary character for his book. As he looked in books he came upon a 15th century fellow named Prince Vlad Tepes.

This Romanian prince was betrayed by the church as they let his father move to where he wanted to go, but the price was his two youngest sons. Vlad became outraged and decided to take revenge on the church, He killed hundreds of people, impaling them with a rod through their rectum up the spine and out of the head. He stuck the poles in the ground.....hundreds at a time and left the carrion for the birds to enjoy!

He would do favors to the  people and  afterwards he would impale them, for fun.

Once he asked a man to give him all his money. The man went to his house and took all his money for him. When Vlad realized he had indeed given him all his money he gave it back saying," It is good that you gave it all or I would have killed you. Then he gave the money back to the man, but secretly put in a few coins of his own. The man noticed when he counted his money that there were extra coins and he went to the prince and told him there were too many coins in the bag now. "It is good you told me, it was a test and if you didn't tell me I was prepared to impale you" Vlad told the man! He killed people for the pleasure and didn't distinguish between man woman or child! He also loved to dip his bread in their blood. This must have been the inspiration for Bran Stoker's book and looking around found that Bran Castle would be the perfect place for Vlad to come back as Dracula, aka the son of the devil! The book was a huge success! Until Harry Potter, the book of Dracula was the second most popular book sold....the. Bible being number one! Interesting.....one about the son of God and one about the son of the devil. Before the book came out the little village of Brun was a very small village.

What a shock when the first bus from the UK came with tourists to see where Dracula had hidden. At first the villagers said, "Who in the heck is he?" Until they realized how money would come in and then they had stories of their forefathers having the blood sucked from them! Now the village is thriving and the people come in flocks....like Disneyland! I am sending a picture if I can of Vlad the Impaler. He was not a handsome man by any means.

This is the broach worn by him or maybe the fictional character... it's the dragon.

We climbed to the top of the mountain to see the castle.. huff, huff, and enjoyed our tour of most of the rooms...lots of steps up and down.. huff, huff! Afterwards there was time for shopping, but I didn't do much. from there to dinner down the worst road in Romania. Lunch was great: soup, stew with polenta, and crepes with chocolate. (As usual it was so much food we settled for dinner tonight as soup or a small pizza at the Irish restaurant [ yes, very bazaar!])

On the way home  from lunch however, we came upon a funeral....people all walking on that horrid road and we couldn't pass. We had to drive very, very slow and were at least forty minutes late getting back to Sinaia.

We unloaded our stuff then walked UPHILL some more to Sinaia Hotel...huge place used as a hospital during both world wars, and the MONASTERY...even more steps! We are all enjoying the trip in spite of all the climbing and loss of sleep. I am having to write this the hard way as my new Bluetooth keypad won't sync with the iPad so it's already 22:33 (whatever!) and Michael is snoring away. I hope I can get this sent with some pictures!