Curly Tour - Day trip from Cluj :)
Description
Tick off three must-see rural attractions on this full-day, small-group tour to Turda Salt Mine, Turda Gorge, and Rimetea village from Cluj-Napoca. Learn about the region’s industrial heritage at the 400-year-old mine, then glimpse Romania’s famous countryside at the Turda Gorge. Get a taste of traditional fare in Rimetea village and avoid hidden costs throughout with transfers, and entrance fees included in the price. -Tick off three must-see attractions in just one day Benefit from the personalized attention of your small-group guide For this trip, it is recommended mountain sneakers or hiking boots.
Tour Options
Itinerary
Pick Up Location
We will travel a distance of 31 km to Turda Salt Mine. We will have a guided tour in English and afterwards we will have free time to take advantage of the facilities of this theme park. List of activities: Ferris Wheel, Mini golf, Bowling, Boating on the underground lake, Pool table and Table tennis . Around 12:30 o'clock we will head to the second attraction.
Turda Gorge After visiting the salt mine, we will take 30 minutes car drive to Turda Gorge. The canyon is nearly 3 km long, with 300 m high walls sculpted in weathered limestone. It depends on your physical condition here we will do a hike of 5 Km or 9 km in a circle tour. We will find a wild karst panorama, with high cliffs and steep with sharp ridges, rock towers, long paths for walking, climbing routes, hiking trails and dozens of caves. The Gorge is a complex geological, biological and archaeological preserve. Many of the caves were inhabited by prehistoric men since the Neolithic. This small and wild canyon has a unique fauna and flora. Bring the camera because you will be impressed with the work that a river did inside a mountain in hundreds of millions of years.
After the hiking trail, we will head to Rimetea village. Known for its traditional white houses with green windows, Rimetea is one of the best-conserved and most beautiful rural attractions in Romania. It’s also the first village in the country that was granted the Europa Nostra award for the successful preservation of its architectural patrimony. Rimetea was for hundreds of years an important mining and blacksmiths’ center, witnessing both prosperous times as a commercial city and decay as a simple medieval village. Besides having this unique and charming architecture, the village is also located in a wonderful geographical area. It is surrounded from side to side by 500-600 meter calcareous massifs and traversed from north to south by the River Rimetea. Here we will take a tour of the village after which we will serve a warm Romanian Traditional meal.
We will make a short stop at a monastery painted by nuns. In the evening we will take you back to Cluj Napoca
Drop Off Location
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Not recommended for travelers with spinal injuries
- Not recommended for pregnant travelers
- Not recommended for travelers with poor cardiovascular health
- Travelers should have at least a moderate level of physical fitness
- Mountain sneakers or hiking boots are necessary for this experience .
Reviews(359)
I can only recommend that everyone book a tour here. I did the Curly Tour with a small worldwide group. Everything runs as described and is even much better in reality. Unbeatable price-performance ratio.
The tour was an excellent experience!! Tudor is very knowledgeable and guided us with care and good energy! It was the first time my kids did hiking trek and they simply loved it:-) highly recommended!!
It was a very varied tour: Culture, nature, culinary arts - everything well coordinated. The hike through the gorge in particular impressed me a lot. The tour is highly recommended, and with Tudor, you have the ideal guide who always adapts it to personal needs and preferences.
Tudor was an excellent guide. Not only is he passionate about his country, which I love he is also very knowledgeable and able to explain everything in an easy to digest way. He cares about the people traveling with him and is very safety conscious. I'd 100% go on one of his tours again if I get the opportunity!
Salina Turda is a must-see for anyone visiting Cluj, and this tour offers a perfect way to see the mine while sampling the history, culture, and natural beauty of the area. Tudor was a wonderful guide, full of useful information and passion for sharing his city with visitors. He guided us through Salina Turda, providing context to this fascinating site while ensuring we had plenty of time to explore the mine on our own. The hike at Turda Gorge offered breathtaking views and left me eager to explore more of the Carpathians. In Rimetea, we enjoyed a delicious lunch of lángos from a local stall amidst the unique houses, followed by a cappuccino in a charming courtyard with mountain rising around us. The monastery was a gorgeous final stop and perfect cap to the day before we drove back to Cluj to a soundtrack of Romanian music. Highly recommend this tour to anyone looking for a day trip from Cluj!
Professional guide with detailed explanation of different places and history. Kind and helpful! We enjoy the trip very much.
I had a wonderful day on the Curly Tour – Day trip from Cluj with Curly Guide Tours. Mihai was a lovely guide: helpful, kind, funny, relaxed, and very knowledgeable without ever making the day feel like a lecture. We were also lucky with the company — the other couple on the tour clicked with us immediately, so the whole day felt easy, warm and full of good conversation. The itinerary was beautifully balanced. Salina Turda was absolutely incredible — much bigger and stranger and more impressive than I expected, with that slightly surreal underground-world feeling. You can take the elevator, but you can also climb the steps down and back up, which I did, and it made the whole experience feel even more satisfying. Also, the temperature underground is around 12°C all year, so definitely bring a jacket, even in summer. The countryside was gorgeous: small villages, rolling fields, sunflowers, and that quiet Transylvanian beauty that makes you want to stare out of the window like a slightly emotional poet. Turda Gorge was majestic — dramatic cliffs, fresh air, and a real sense of scale. Then Rimetea and the monastery brought a gentler kind of beauty: traditional village charm, excellent food, and the divine peace of the monastery. And the food! The traditional lunch was excellent. I especially loved the sarmale, and the papanași — or papanasi, if your keyboard refuses Romanian elegance — deserve their own fan club. Generous, comforting, delicious, and frankly dangerous to anyone pretending they are “just having a bite.” The only part I would not recommend was the zipline. It was fun in theory, but the ending was much too abrupt — it stopped with such a violent bang that I genuinely thought my elbows might snap. That needs improvement, and I personally would skip it. Apart from that, this was a fantastic day trip: beautiful places, excellent guiding, great food, easy conversation, and a really memorable glimpse of the countryside around Cluj. Highly recommended.
I went with Turdo, our guide, and another traveler, and the three of us became like friends. We came from three different continents, and my English wasn't great, but we talked and shared a lot during the trip. Turdo was a fantastic guide, arriving on time – the van was very spacious – he had a welcome gift and drink, gave detailed descriptions of each attraction, and took us to a great restaurant, offering us local specialties. He was very attentive to us during the hike, as some sections of the trail were slippery. This was a worthwhile trip, and I would recommend it to my friends if they ever visit Cluj.
Tudor was absolutely brilliant, he had a real love of Cluj (and Romania in general) and really sold how wonderful the country was. His knowledge was fantastic and he really give some fantastic insights into every place that we went.
Tudor is a great guide! Funny humor and careful! Lovely he brought us an unforgettable day trip ~ Really serious recommendation👍👍
