We had a wonderful family vacation in Romania, during the second week of September 2018. While traveling in the Carpathian mountains, we stayed the night at a lovely little motel called Pensiunea Ruxi. I'm sharing my review of this lovely place to stay in this post. Hopefully, this will help you when looking for accommodation on that region of Romania.
Overall impression
We loved our stay in this quaint Romanian motel (locally known as Pensiunea).
What we liked the most -
- Our hostess was extremely friendly and spoke excellent English.
- The rooms were clean and welcoming.
- The location was right on for our trip to the famous Transfagarasan Road.
- The price was great and we could easily afford two rooms for the four of us.
We booked the place after searching for an affordable place to stay south of the Transfagarasan. Ruxi's motel came up and had that great combination of affordable rates and great review scores. We made the reservations in advance via Booking.com. The price for two rooms, each with its own bathroom, came to a total of $58. These are common rates in this area of the world, but not of the establishments are so highly-praised.
If you want to make your reservations, here's a link to Ruxi's on Booking.com.
Fair warning - the place gets booked well in advance. There was free cancellation when we made our reservations, but it may not be available on high-season so check for your own dates.
Where is Pensiunea Ruxi located?
The full address is -
Str. Negru Voda 104, 115300
Curtea de Argeş, Romania
This is what it looks like on the map -
As you can see, this is just south of the Carpathian mountains, along highway 7c, the road from Bucharest to the Transfagarasan. This is a great location if, like us, you want to start your mountain drive the following morning. Or if you're coming from the north, looking for a place to spend the night after driving through the mountains.
We came straight from the Bucharest airport and it took us about two hours to get to that point.
What was the place like?
The motel is located along the main road that goes through the town. It was very easy to find it as we were driving along. We pulled into the driveway where we parked our car (a midsize SUV, and there was enough room for that).
The first impression was great, as we were welcomed by a wall of gorgeous potted geranium plants -
There was actually another section to this floral wall, a kind of small patio where guests can enjoy a drink or a snack outside -
We were welcomes by a very friendly hostess who spoke fluent English. She introduced herself as Ruxi, the owner of the establishment (and yes, it's named after her!). Ruxi is an English teacher at the local school, so we had a nice little chat with her.
To say that she gave a us a warm welcome would be an understatement. I don't think we've ever been so warmly welcomed by any motel or hotel owner ever (and we've stayed at hundreds of places during our trips). There was something entirely delightful at being welcome by a friendly inn keeper in a quaint Romanian village. A great experience.
Our rooms were on the second floor. There's no elevator, so if you want to stay here and stairs are an issue, make sure you book a room on the ground floor.
The rooms were tastefully decorated. The furniture and decor items were neither fancy nor new, but everything was clean and tidy, and nothing was visibly worn out. The beds were comfortable and there was a flat-screen tv in each room.
The bathrooms were very clean, with good-sized showers (no bathtubs).
There was no breakfast included in this rate but Ruxi does offer guests a dining area/kitchen downstairs. When we went down there in the morning, we found a small kitchen, well stocked with coffee, tea and hot cocoa. There was even milk and some cereals. This was a great spot for us to prepare our sandwiches for the day.
I hope you find this review helpful! The opinions in the review are entirely our own and we were not compensated for writing it. Enjoy Romania!