Explore Romania’s Medieval Villages, Castles, and Vineyards by Bike

It was a warm June afternoon in Bucharest. Rays of sun bounced off the glass of Romanian-produced rosé that I’d held up to clink above the table. Over a soundtrack of loud house music, Martha Butterfield, a vivacious 84-year-old with wispy silver hair, giggled naughtily and shouted, “Live your f@*#ing best life!” 

She wasn’t giving a toast. She was reading from a piece of art hanging on the wall of the restaurant, Casa di David. But the words would have made a fitting mantra for my weeklong cycling adventure with Butterfield & Robinson, an active-travel company founded by Martha, her brother Sidney Robinson, and her husband, George Butterfield. Joie de vivre has been B&R’s driving force since its early days in the 1960s planning bike trips from Vienna to Paris. 

While Western Europe itineraries remain among the company’s most popular, George, 85, thrives on forging tracks in less-discovered corners of the world. Romania, with its Easter-egg-colored Saxon villages, Gothic castles, medieval citadels, and forested valleys, is his latest obsession. Five-star accommodation is a feature of any B&R itinerary; in the past few years, the opening of properties like Bethlen Estates and Matca have allowed George to curate high-end trips there. 

I joined George, Martha, and 12 of their longtime clients on a newly created trip that started in the vibrant capital, explored wine country, and ended in Transylvania, a cycling mecca. “Here’s to a week of discovery,” George toasted, adding with a wink, “Thank you for trusting me.” “I’d follow you anywhere, George,” yelled Andy Gleeman, a B&R groupie on his 11th trip.

It’s not all long mileage and steep climbs—B&R journeys prioritize cultural immersion. To that end, we began with a history lesson. After lunch, Raluca Şpiac, of the travel agency Beyond Dracula, gave our group a glimpse of the country’s Communist years, from 1948 to 1989. She took us to Ferestroika, an apartment turned private museum that felt like a time capsule from the 1980s, complete with a pantry sparsely stocked with monthly rations. In contrast, the mansion of Romania’s notorious final Communist rulers, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, was the epitome of extravagance, with velvet- and silk-lined walls, a gilded bathroom, and a private cinema. 

“The Ceaușescu times were particularly traumatizing,” Şpiac said. “But Communism forced people to be very creative.” We witnessed that ingenuity in everything from the edgy pieces on display at the Museum of Recent Art to the open-fire cooking that evening at Bucharest’s Soro Lume restaurant. George ranked the meal among the best of his life, and he’s traveled to 51 countries and owns a home in Burgundy, France. Palates don’t get more discerning.

The phrase “Never Underestimate an Old Man With a Bicycle” was emblazoned on the back of George’s cycling jersey, and I spent much of the next day staring at it as I pedaled behind him. In this group of rugged B&R veterans, at 44, I was the youngest guest. E-bikes allowed those in their 70s and 80s to breeze past me on the rolling, vineyard-covered hills of Dealu Mare, one of Romania’s premier wine regions. Our 18-mile route led us to the tasting room of LacertA winery, where we learned about the country’s dark-skinned native grape, Fetească Neagră.

Grapevines gave way to the soaring peaks of the southern Carpathian Mountains as a van transferred us three hours northeast to Brașov, a medieval city in Transylvania. It has several historical monuments—most notably one of Romania’s largest Gothic buildings, the Black Church—but also modern cafés and bistros. At One Soul, we ate tender duck breast dressed in a deliciously funky sauce with pear and yuzu. 

Over the next few days, as we cycled through pastoral landscapes speckled with bell-shaped haystacks and well-preserved Saxon villages, it felt like we’d traveled back to preindustrial times. (The Communist years left much of the countryside undeveloped.) A slower pace allowed me to observe shepherds tending their flock, women fetching water from wells, and men steering horse-drawn carts. Ponies munched grass on the side of the road, and white storks nested atop farmhouses. 

Transylvania is home to people from more than a dozen different ethnicities, and people we passed spoke both Germanic and Hungarian dialects. We would come across whitewashed Unitarian churches in one village, then towering Gothic or Romanesque Lutheran churches in the next. 

On the fourth day, an hour-long ride led us to the village of Alma Vii, which was founded in the 13th century. The fortified church and its surrounding stone walls have been restored, and it now houses the Center for Interpretation of Traditional Culture. Inside, craftspeople braided corn husks for mats and made felt woolen slippers and hats. 

A local restaurant, Belalma Rural, had brought a farm-to-table feast to the center, and we dug into hearty plates of sautéed lentils with oven-baked eggplant and ricotta-like urdă cheese. Palincă, a fruit brandy served with every meal, flowed freely, and the group teased me—the “youngster”—when I abstained. “But this is the B&R way,” insisted Dick Balfour, one of the five lawyers in our group.

Even with 20 to 30 miles of cycling a day, I was still feeling the trip’s indulgences, so I’d committed to biking the optional 11 miles back to our hotel, Bethlen Estates, in the medieval village of Criș. That evening, we’d been told, the property’s super-talented chef would be serving us a seven-course dinner of updated Hungarian recipes, like fermented cucumber with fresh peas and smoked trout and dill, served with a cold cucumber gazpacho. I intended to be hungry. 

Bethlen Estates was the ancestral home of Count Miklós Bethlen, who passed away in 2001. Since then, his widow, Countess Gladys Bethlen, has been meticulously restoring the property with ambitions of making it Romania’s most luxurious place to stay. I’d say she succeeded—not a detail was missed, from the fresh-cut flowers in my bedroom, which was warmed by a traditional tiled stove, to the handmade ceramics in the dining room.

Székely Land, where we spent our final two days, is an area in the eastern Carpathians where many ethnic Hungarians live. The cultural distinctions made it feel as if we’d cycled across a border: at our hotel, Zabola Estate, a fairy-tale property in Zăbala owned by a Hungarian noble family, the staff spoke Hungarian, and we dined on dishes like goulash and kürtőskalács, a spit-cooked, sugar-dusted pastry we hadn’t been served anywhere else. 

My legs were finally starting to feel the miles, so after an afternoon ride I wandered down a forested path (watching for bears as I went) to Zabola’s sauna and cold plunge. I returned to the terrace at sunset to find our group clinking glasses of plum palincă. After a week with George and Martha, I left convinced that the secret to living your best life is simple: good food and good wine, friends, and a view. 

A version of this story first appeared in the July 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Joy Ride.”