"What's a good Birthday? First, celebrating it. Secondly, having around you the people truly important in your life and being able to create memories together."
This is how I began my previous two birthday-related posts, and despite many things are changing in my life, this saying seems to remain true forever, still resonating with every single word from it.
Actually, I think I can finally say that I marked the 10th Birthday Anniversary in the woods, after having the first experience like this when turning 18 years old. There are various ways to celebrate one's birthday, but for me and my twin sister, everyone knows already that we will always look for a unique and new destination each year, to gather in a cabin and have more or less fun, but surely enjoy the time spent together.
Life took pretty much each member of our family to different parts of the country, our cousin actually living in the UK for many years, so getting to see each other in the complete formula is quite hard. However, no matter what happens, we always manage to gather all together in September when we celebrate my and my sister's birthday, but also that of my cousin and my boyfriend, who are also born in September.
This year, things were a bit crazy as every single one had its struggles that more or less kept his mind away from the beautiful tradition we all built together, so despite knowing the weekend we will celebrate this event (12-14th September), we didn't really focus enough on searching for accommodation or what things to explore around it.
That led to many plans being cancelled at the last moment, missing some cool accommodations for being rented by other people, but also sadness and frustration as we felt like we would miss this year's anniversary since we were a pretty large group of people and the options are limited when it comes to more than 6 people looking to rent a cabin.
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After more than one month of doing our research on what part of Romania to make our way towards, we found a modern cabin just 20 km away from us, which also seemed like the best option since my boyfriend's job requires delegations that sometimes start on Sunday, but also for being so close to our cats that were going to be alone during the weekend and we could always drive to them quickly in case of need.
Sadly, despite having a very nice-looking cabin and friendly owners of the cabin who welcomed us on our arrival, we were really disappointed to face some struggles when reaching the cabin. First, half of the road was on a forest path that was very damaged because of the heavy rains we had lately, which the owners did not mention about, even though they knew the cars we were going to come with were not SUVs or 4x4.
Then on their website, they mention "A modern cabin with 6 bedrooms, each with its own bathroom" which I am not sure what is the biggest lie. First, the cabin has only 4 bedrooms with one bathroom on each floor, so 2 bathrooms. The other two bedrooms were in a different cabin, a bit away from this one, with the bathroom being again, in a different building. So if you need to use the bathroom at night for example, you have to get outside the cabin, and walk a bit more until entering the building with the bathroom inside. Definitely not fun during the cold nights.
The modern cabin was nice, with a modern kitchen but still not well equipped with everything one needs, the couch from the dining room was very generous and offered a great view over the valley, and there was even a reading corner which I was looking forward to taking advantage of.
Along with these, there was a sauna and a wood-fired hot tub that we were allowed to use as much as we wanted during our stay, for an extra payment of 100€ in addition to the 600€ we paid to rent the whole cabin(s) for us.
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Even with all the minuses, we decided that we won't let these take our mood down, nor the weather that was quite grumpy on our arrival (there were still 2 cars needed to arrive), so we took advantage of all the sweets I baked early in the morning to have as snacks before serving the dinner all together when everyone arrived.
The view we had on the way to the cabin was halfway accompanied by the first image with the mountains in front of us, and the second half with the forest path in the valley that offered us a great view over the villages nearby and how beautiful and relaxed life is.
I am still not sure which of the two views I love more.
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Once everyone arrived, we set free our energy, ready to create plenty of memories that will stay at least until next year when we will repeat the experience in a different place.
Some of us enjoyed the hot bath, while others were shooting with a bow, playing ping pong, or using toy weapons, and some were taking in the view. There were no other plans than taking the best of this adventure and enjoying every minute of it as we felt doing.
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The next day in the morning though, we had some plans. Because we are cat parents, my boyfriend and I are used to waking up quite early in the morning. So we decided to take advantage of this moment and wait for the sunrise. Sadly, the deep fog outside had other plans for us, but we adapted quickly, made our coffees, and drank them from the hot tub that felt so refreshing in comparison with the cold weather outside.
Nevertheless, it's been one of the best mornings we've had so far and definitely the most panoramic and tasty coffee we've enjoyed.
Later on, we were even blessed with a wonderful rainbow that was the start of some better weather conditions.
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Saturday is usually the day that we spend exploring the surroundings or enjoying various activities as we had on the 27th B-day Anniversary or the 26th Birthday Party. But as we barely decided on the accomodation on the last moment, we had no time to plan what we could enjoy nearby, so we decided to take this experience as it is and use it to relax and enjoy the time we had together.
That's how we continued our games for the rest of the day, spent some time reading, watched the valley being filled with sheep that created a great scenery, ending up with a campfire and a hot bath in the bathtub from my bedroom.
I heard of this kind of bathtub before being placed in the bedroom, and they always seemed so cosy and intimate, so the anniversary of turning 28 years old finally made me have this experience as well.
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The very last day of our stay came with a surprise, bringing into the spotlight the sunrise we were chasing the other day, so despite having some powerful wind outside, we were really happy to attend this in such a special location.
The cabin's owners were nice enough to let us spend as much time as we wanted there, even if the checkout should have been made before 12 PM. However, since many of us had to drive a long way home and the weather conditions began playing nasty again, we ended up leaving at around 2 PM after fully recharging our batteries with all the beauty of that place.
At first, we were scared because of the problem with bears that is more serious in Romania than ever, and especially that we were in a cabin in the woods away from phone signal, wi-fi or any people at all, but it ended up being a great detox for all of us, staying away from daily routines and stress. And we already count down the days to see what the next year will bring!
Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (300+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 750+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.
~ @GabrielaTravels ~