Getting to & around

While in Romania, American citizens can easily rent a car with their passport and their US licence.

Meanwhile, you can use the form below for renting a car in Romania:

There are 17 civilian airports in Romania but only about half of them are served by international flights. The most important airport is Bucharest's Henri Coanda. Bucharest has a second airport named Baneasa that usually serves low-cost flights. Other important airports outside of Bucharest are Timisoara's Traian Vuia airport and Cluj-Napoca's airport. Constanta, Targu-Mures, Sibiu, Arad, Oradea, Iasi, Suceava and Satu Mare also have international airports, though the traffic isn't too big.

There are a few major Romanian airlines, such as:

• Tarom - the largest of the bunch; state owned; it operates from Bucharest's Henri Coanda airport;

Romania has one of the best rail networks in Europe, though the quality of the trains itself isn't that great if you are to consider other travel guide. I for one like them quite a bit, especially the old ones.

There are some new Siemens trains operating since 2003 called "Blue Arrows" (dubbed as "Intercity" in certain situations). They're supposed to be fast and very comfortable. From my own experience, they're neither. I took a ride with one of these trains from Constanta to Mangalia. The seats are very rough and you'll end up with a back ache from them. There's no privacy either and you have to share a full, open space, train wagon with everyone else in it. Add to that the fact that it took me more than 2 hours for a 50 kilometres trip from Constanta to Mangalia and you'll get my point.

Most foreign tourists chose traveling by car to reach Romania. Romanians like their steering wheel on the left as most other Europeans and European licences are recognized and valid.

Americans can easily rent a car with their passport and their US licence.

Most of the highways (not really highways, actually; in Romanian they're called either "drum european" - european road - or "drum national" - national road; a highway is called "autostrada") have a mere two or four lanes. National and european roads are in the best shape, with county roads coming a distant second. That's if we exclude the two highways (actually, one bad highway and another - quality - half a highway).

Taxis are quite cheap in Romania. The cost is usually around 40-45 cents (1.3 RON) per km, with an extra 1 RON (about 30 cents) for the start. In smaller cities taxis are even cheaper than that. Do also note that in some cities there are special tarrifs for night trips or outer city trips.

The taxi driver may want to cheat you if you look like a tourist. If so, just tell him to start his meter and you should be fine. You may want to negociate your ride in advance if he refuses to start his meter, but only do that in case you've used a tool such as Google Earth to measure the distance and costs.