Day 13: Mediaș

One downside of our guesthouse not being located in the town centre is that we (or, more precisely, Tim!) had a long walk to the nearest shop to buy breakfast. He did get a nice view on the way though  

Once he'd returned from Lidl, we sat outside on the terrace to eat breakfast and our landlady brought us coffee and homemade chocolate cake, which was a nice surprise  We were able to have a relaxed start to the day because we were planning to visit the town of Mediaș, about 25 miles west of Sighișoara, and there wasn't a train until after 11am.

Luckily, the train journey between the two towns is only short. We travelled through some pretty countryside, before stepping off the train in Mediaș around half an hour later.

The first sight we came to when we started walking from the train station into the town was this synagogue. We've seen a lot more synagogues on this holiday than I expected!

We'd chosen Mediaș for a day trip because we'd read that it had a well preserved historic centre.

It did indeed look very pretty as we walked towards it.

It didn't take long to reach the main square.

There's a little park in the middle of the square, full of colourful flowers.

Little streets lead off from here in all directions. We followed one of them, towards the edge of the old town.

There we found the remnants of the old town walls.

We were able to walk along the side of them for a while.

We came to one of the old gates into the town...

...and went back into the main centre.

There were so many colourful houses here  

Mediaș is believed to have been founded in 1146, making it one of the oldest towns in Romania.

Again, this was historically a town that was settled by Saxons, and so it wasn't until the 19th century that the first Romanian church was built here.

The big church which dominates the town is a Lutheran church. 

It was originally built as a Catholic church by the Transylvanian Saxons in the 15th century, but converted to a Lutheran church during the Reformation.

It was built as a fortified church, in the middle of a fortress complex, and as we got closer we were able to see a big tower, known as the Trumpeter's Tower.

It was so called because a trumpeter would sit at the top of it and alert the citizens of the town to approaching danger.

This pretty building next to the church complex is a high school, founded by the local pastor Stephan Ludwig Roth. 

He upset the Hungarians by arguing against Hungarian becoming the sole official language of Transylvania and was executed in 1849.

All the exploring was making us hungry, so we set off to find somewhere to get lunch.

We found a nice restaurant where we could sit in the main square.

I played it safe with schnitzel and chips again, but Tim was more adventurous and chose a Romanian dish. It was a pork stew, served with polenta and peasant-style potatoes.

For pudding, Tim had pancakes filled with nuts and honey, while I had a chocolate brownie. Unbelievably, the entire meal (including a glass of wine for me, a beer for Tim, a bottle of water and a coffee) only came to £21.

After lunch we did some more exploring.

We caught sight of another tower on the opposite edge of the town to where we'd been previously.

It was a really impressive tower, complete with portcullis  

There's a whole stretch of wall which has been restored here.

Just outside the walls, we found the town's Romanian Orthodox cathedral.

It was nearly time to go back to the station to catch one of the infrequent trains back to Sighișoara, but we just had time for a final stroll around.

It felt like some of the houses in this part of town were competing to see who could be the most brightly coloured  This blue was rather striking...

...as was this yellow...

...and with this green

As we had a final walk through the  main square, we realised belatedly that there is a Mediaș sign here. Admittedly not quite as impressive as the one in Brasov, but it still made for a good photo  

The train journey back took a little longer than expected, because the train went really slowly for no clear reason (there have been zero train announcements on any train we've travelled on during this holiday - both in Bulgaria and Romania!). But we'd paid for first class again, so we had comfy seats with air conditioning and it didn't really matter.

Tomorrow we will be leaving Sighișoara and travelling to our final destination of the holiday: Cluj.