The end of the Transalpina in Rânca

Did you know that Romania has some amazing ski resorts? The Carpathian Mountains aka The Transylvanian Alps feature some great skiing and at affordable prices.

I am not a big skier. Mostly this is because I grew up in the southeast part of the US and our winter happens in the last two weeks of February, usually.

I did, however, go skiing once when I was 13. It was a harrowing experience. I am not an athletic or coordinated person, so there was a lot of falling on the bunny slope that day.

Living in Brasov, we are right next door to a popular ski resort called Poiana Brasov. Usually, we go up to Poiana to go butt sledding or throw snowballs at each other, but lots of people actually go there to ski. In fact, so many people go there to ski that it’s very busy.

So for my second time skiing, I knew I needed to go to an easy slope where I could learn without having to worry about plowing over small children. Just kidding. Those little kids are great at skiing.

We decided instead to go to a small ski resort called Rânca. Located at the end of the Transalpina, it’s just far enough away that you feel like you’re going on a decent road trip. We’ve actually driven the Transalpina before, but it was in the summer. In the winter, the Transalpina is closed (like the Transfagarasan) because it’s impossible to keep open.

Rânca is the red marker and Braşov is the yellow dot (about a four hour drive over some bumpy roads)

Our trip to Rânca was great. We went after the Romanian national holiday when everyone was back at work. This meant we had the entire pensiune to ourselves. There was an older woman who was in charge of the place and she cooked every meal for us. In case you’re wondering the difference between a pensiune and a hotel, a pensiune means you are going to get more personal service. We were treated like family. I kind of felt like I had gone to Grandma’s house for a few days. Mămăliga for every meal! It was great.

Here is the website for the place we went, in case you want to go, too 🙂  Make sure you call because if you use a website like Booking.com, you might not get the best price. Normally, these booking websites charge some extra fees that the pensiune usually wouldn’t charge.

I made a short video of our trip. Please enjoy the footage of me struggling to stay upright. [Also, notice the complete lack of people! In Romania, people are very predictable with their vacations. It’s either the seaside or the mountains. There are certain days everyone in the country is off (like December 1st). Everyone had to go back to work on the 4th. That was the day we started our trip. We did a similar thing back in August when we went to Bucharest while the entire city was at the seaside for the August 15th holiday]