After visiting three Romanian castles, Štirbey, Peleş, and Pelişor, in one day, we were understandably ‘castled out’. A trip from Sinaia up into the higher plateaus of the Bucegi Mountains sounded ideal.
At the entrance to the Sinaia Telegondola, we had the option of going to the first station or continuing up to a second. We were glad we’d chosen the former having been charged 150 Lei in total, or £25.31. Compared to other entrance fees and tickets, it seemed extremely expensive and unusually for Romania, there was no discount for pensioners.
As we had to wait 15 minutes, we checked out the piste maps at the entrance and found that the Telegondola took us up to 1400m. It can handle 1,700 passengers an hour with a transit time of 4 minutes and 10 seconds.
We had expected small cars, like ones we’d experienced in Piatra Neamt, but it turned out to be a large single cabin accommodating around 20 people. We were the only travellers and having switched to look out of the other side, my husband was told off by the operator for moving around. Unfortunately, the windows were a little scratched and it was not great for photos.
On arrival, there was little to see and no viewing deck. Construction work was underway and centred around completely renovating the former Hotel New Montana which will be rebranded Alexandrion Royal.
We could see the next stage of the lift system, Gondola Cota which would have taken us up to an altitude of 2,000m.
As the Telegondola only ran every 30 minutes we had to wait to take it back down, this time with two other people.
This was probably the only time during our four-week trip, when we felt we had been slightly ripped off.
