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Accommodation |
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Great accomodation options across Romania, from hotels and motels
to traditional guest villas and bed and breakfast guesthouses |
This pages offers tips and tricks about
getting typical guesthosue type accommodation in Romania for English-speaking travellers. See Links below for Accommodation Listing Websites.
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Villas and Pensiunes in the Carpathians
Nestled high in the Eastern Carpathian mountains
at the ski village of Darau, in County Neamţ
of the Moldova Region |
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 The photo immediately preceding this notice is Copyright (c)2005 - 2008 Rest
Romania SRL, All rights reserved.
Photo:
© REST ROMĀNIA
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Old World Charm Abounds
Despite a handful of truly "Western" accommodation
choices in most Romanian cities, accommodation in Romania is still best
described as having buckets of "Old World Charm".
The beds may be a bit older, and the shower
facilities possibly leaking a bit, but this is all completely balanced
by the warm welcome, great food, and probably a fair amount of
ţuică plum brandy finding it's way to the evening
dinner table!
Small Comfort(ers)
If you're not European, you'll also find the beds
rarely have the type of tight sheets with blanket, comforter, or doona
atop. A properly made Romanian bed has an undersheet on the
mattress with pillowcases, but atop the body is usually only a single
light or heavy cover.
You may be able to coax your inn-keeper to
make you an American style bed, although this will be a rather "foreign"
request for them. Additionally, your "double" bed will often be
two wooden framed single bed pushed together.
Don't be surprised,
this is a normal practice as the Queen size and certainly the king sized matresses familiar to non-European English speakers are both expensive
and much more rare in Romania. Four and five-star
properties catering to foreign tourists of course are more likely to
have full beds.
Rooms in Romania
One of the most numerous types of accommodation, in big
towns and small villages, is the "pensiune".
It is usually run by a family, and is sometimes a converted large house,
offering reasonable rooms, some of which may be en suited (with
bathrooms).
A small restaurant may be attached to the property, and
the size of the pensiune can vary widely, from 4 rooms to 20.
Pensiunes range from rather cheap and tawdry to quite reasonable to
simply superb. Check out our forum for reviews
and views on pensiunes in the various areas for opinion.
The Villa
is usually the next step up from the pensiune, with upgraded facilities,
often a full pool and spa, a prime location, secure parking and close to
major attractions.
Most villas offer an experience slightly more
akin to an American bed and breakfast, although with a few of the
amenities of a proper hotel as well. The mix can be elusive to
nail down, but the distinction between a villa and an pensiune is
basically one of additional services.
Farmstays, also known as "agro-tourism" and homestays
with families in villages usually offer a rather attractive option for
those wanting some real home-cooked food and a healthy dose of real
Romanian culture.
The cheap price per person, usually between 10E
and 25E per night, makes this a fabulous option in many ways for the
serious culture-hungry traveller. Check out
our region pages -- each town page
has a Lodging section, so navigate or
search for the town, and then check out the Lodging section towards
the bottom of each locality page.
Youth Hostels
are just beginning to catch on in earnest across Romania, with about 80%
of the main tourist areas catered to by a network of 42 registered
hostels.
A great way for backpackers and anyone who doesn't mind
a bit of dormitory slumber, the
Youth Hostel Association of Romania has 42 registered locations.
Whilst nowhere near as standarised an experience as some other European
countries (or as in Australia the world leader in ameniable hostelry),
the Romanian youth hostels offer good basic accommodation well within
accepted norms.
The American at the Pensiune
One American traveller was confused about the seemingly
mixed standards at her pensiune (like a small hotel, usually with a
restaurant and run by a family).
The veal şniţel (schnitzel) was
completely tender and perfectly done; the service the right level of
being there when needed, and not being intrusive; and the wine had an excitingly
fresh and almost Australian like sun-filled flavour.
But as she looked across the linen tablecloth, she
notice a few little cigarette burns, and noted with disapproval, that there was
indeed a small chip on the base of her rather ornate wine glass.
With an arched eyebrow, she tsk-tsk'd the hole in the tablecloth to her
new Romanian boyfriend sitting next to her.
Perplexed, he followed her gaze to the hole, and back up to meet
her eyes as she resignedly sighed and said, "In
my country," as Americans often started sentences, "it is just
not
acceptable to have a tablecloth in this condition!".
To
which her boyfriend's eyes went wide and he said "But they do not have
the money to be able to replace this. And it is not a problem for
health, just a small flaw. The veal is not to your liking?".
The American woman swung the gavel on the matter as
with a resoundingly loud voice she declared that "Well, they're just too
poor to have a restaurant then!".
The boyfriend made
the classic Romanian shrug with upside-down smile and little grunt.
Not really understanding
her objection, he decided just to pour her some more wine. From the
kitchen, an old woman watched the couple, and then turned to shake her
head at her grandson the waiter giving him a raised eyebrow and a
knowing stare, signalling that the rude woman's table would get no
complimentary palincă tonight.
The point missed by the woman, and something which
English speakers must get used to in Romania, is that the accommodation
and dining facilities are maintained by well-meaning and generally clean
staff doing the best they can on very limited cash flow.
This has the effect in your small family-run
restaurants of meaning that almost all your food is really quite fresh,
and always very local. It also means that at these small
pensiunes and villa eateries, not everything will be available on the
menu. You can be told "no chicken today" or "no fish today",
simply because nobody has caught any of either in the village over the
last 24 hours. That may just be because of laziness, or
because they are lying to you, reserving a chicken out back for
themselves.
After a while in Romania, the traveller from the west
slowly realises that they've actually been getting the best of what is
on offer, be it a whole trout from a mountain lake seared to perfection,
or a bed made with a down cover filled with sunshine, but a few small
tears on the lining perhaps.
If at any time you are not satisfied with some small
component of your farm-stay, B&B or pensiune room, decorations, food or
facilities, you may well wish to remember that you've paid about one
third to one half as much as you would have at home.
Seriously, just try getting a reasonably sized room in
such a good location in Lake Tahoe, Port Douglas, Banff or Queenstown!
Not going to happen!
Of course, "cheaper" is more accurate here, and you
don't really want to find the cheapest of Romanian offerings.
Really, there are some VERY bad accommodation options, and you need to
stick to some basic rules for finding the place you need
1. You
may or may not get what you pay for. Never make the
mistake that a slightly higher price is going to really make a big
difference in quality.
It really is hard to tell from the
countless people alongside the main road leading into a resort village
as to which place will be the best. Unless your Romanian is
quite good, or your prospective host speaks English well, this
interchange may or may not be useful for you.
2. Seeing is Believing.
When you have the time -- and you should ALWAYS budget an hour at
least to find accommodation, you really must go around and actually look
at the places you are considering.
Your best bet if making
reservations, is to look at a website like ours (see
links below) for
accommodation in the region you are
visiting. There is NO substitute for seeing for
yourself, whether in person, or a good photo online!
3. Stars Stars Everywhere.
The actual quality of the mid-range 3-star hotel, motel or guest
house can vary widely under the Romanian rating system.
Whilst the
5-star properties are generally cast-iron and quite good, in the middle
zones you can find some unexpected discrepancies.
But, as with
most things Romanian, the small things which an American traveller might
find weird are really matter-of-course, and not out of the ordinary --
at least in Romania. Hot water, for example, may or may not be
available 24 hours a day. This is normal in some mid-range and
lower accommodation options, and something Romanians themselves don't
really notice. So, if you need to be sure about something, ask!
Romania is criss-crossed by
a
rail network which is
surprisingly about 70% as complete as the paved road network! From
the Transilvanian plateau to the Danube and Black Sea coast, your best
accommodation might be on the train itself!
Sleeper car room and couchettes are available on the
Rapid and Accelerat trains nation-wide, and you can even come into
Romania on a train from Budapest or Vienna with truly super sleeper
coaches.
Any trip in Romania more than 6 hours generally
qualifies for the sleeper services, and you can reserve both first and
second class sleeper accommodation. Check out our
Romania by Rail section for more information on sleeping your way to
your next destination!
There are over 4000 pensions and nearly 2000 farmstays in Romania, most
of which are in the National Agency for Rural Ecological and Cultural
Tourism (NARECT) network. About a third of these (1265) of these
are certified, meeting the legal requirements of certification, while the remaining units require modernisation
to meet the standards.
Those 1265 certified properties offer 4,612 rooms (accommodating 9,637
guests), out of which 948 are pensions sleeping 7,836 in 3,731 rooms. 319
are farm-stay agro-tourism properties, with 881 rooms accommodating 1,801
guests.
The NARECT certified properties are distributed in the main tourist
areas as follows:
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Braşov county: 156 tourist units (12.31% of the certified units);
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Harghita county: 151 tourist units (11.91% of the certified units);
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Sibiu county: 118 tourist units (9.31% of the certified units);
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Maramureş county: 90tourist units (7.1% of the certified units);
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Suceava county: 78 tourist units (6.15% of the certified units).
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RestRomānia.ro