Ninety seconds on Bucegi Sphinx
The cable car does not run in strong wind, and the plateau is where the wind is. A day that looks settled in the valley can end at the bottom station, which is worth knowing before this is built into an itinerary.
A wind carved rock about eight metres high on the plateau at 2,216 metres, whose profile reads as a face for about an hour either side of the sun being behind it. It is a short walk from the cable car station.
The cabin climbs out of Bușteni in about ten minutes and lands at Babele, and from the top station the walk to the rock takes another twenty on ground close to level. The formation the station is named for stands beside it and gets photographed on the way past. There is no shelter up here and no shade: the plateau is high, flat and open in every direction, so weather that felt mild in the valley arrives with nothing in its way. Ninety minutes covers the walk out, the rock and the walk back. The queue at the bottom station is the part that cannot be planned for, and on a summer weekend it runs longer than the visit.
Explore the rest of Bușteni
The highest point of the Bucegi at 2,514 metres, with a meteorological station and a hut on the summit, reached in five or six hours from…
The summer residence of the country's first king, finished in 1883 and extended to 1914, in a German Renaissance style with 160 rooms, a…
A mountain resort in the Prahova valley that grew around a monastery and then around a king. The first King Carol built his summer palace…