Romania
About the size of the United Kingdom, and it does not read as a single place.
How many days do you need in Romania?
Ten days covers two regions properly. The distances are the constraint rather than the sights: Bucharest to the painted monasteries of Bucovina is about 450 kilometres and most of it is single carriageway. A first visit usually takes Transylvania and the Prahova valley castles and leaves Maramureș, the Danube delta and the Black Sea coast for a second. Five days is enough for Brașov, Sibiu, Sighișoara and the castles between them.
Do you need a car in Romania?
For the villages, yes. The railway reaches the cities and the average speed across the network is about 45 kilometres an hour: Bucharest to Brașov is a reasonable two and a half hours, but Bucharest to Cluj-Napoca runs ten to twelve. The wooden churches of Maramureș, the fortified Saxon villages and the painted monasteries have no useful bus. A road vignette called the rovinieta is required on national roads and a hire car normally comes with one, which is worth confirming at the desk.
When is the best time to visit Romania?
May and June for the hay meadows and the wildflowers, September for the light. July and August are hot on the plains and crowded on the coast. The Transfăgărășan, the high road over the Făgăraș range, normally opens between late June and the start of July and closes at the end of October, and it shuts at night even in season; winter closes it and several other mountain roads completely. The ski season in the Prahova valley runs December to March.
What language is spoken in Romania?
Romanian, which is a Romance language and closer to Italian than to any of the Slavic languages around it. Hungarian is the first language of a large minority across Transylvania and is what is spoken in Târgu Mureș, Rimetea and much of the Székely Land. German survives in the Saxon towns as place names and inscriptions on church walls, no longer as a spoken language. English is common among younger people in the cities and much less so in the villages.
Does Romania use the euro?
No. The currency is the Romanian leu and there is no confirmed date for adopting the euro; the government’s own target has moved repeatedly and 2029 is the earliest still discussed. Romania has been a full member of the Schengen area since 1 January 2025, when checks at the land borders were lifted, so arriving overland from Hungary or Bulgaria no longer means a passport queue. Cards are taken almost everywhere in the cities and cash is still worth carrying in villages and at monasteries.
Where do you fly into Romania?
Bucharest Otopeni OTP is the main gateway and handled about 17 million passengers in 2025, roughly three fifths of the country’s air traffic. Cluj-Napoca CLJ is the second and the better arrival for northern Transylvania and Maramureș. Brașov-Ghimbav GHV opened on 15 June 2023, the first new airport built in the country in fifty years, and it is the closest to Bran, Râșnov and the Prahova castles. Timișoara, Iași and Sibiu also take international flights.
