Turda Salt Mine, Turzii Gorge and Rimetea Village

Day 1: Turda Salt Mine – Turzii Gorge – Rimetea Village

According to the top of the most spectacular sights to see out there made by the site businessinsider.com, Turda Salt Mine is situated on the 22nd place. Salina Turda, located in Turda, Romania, is home to an underground theme park that’s nestled inside one of the oldest salt mines in the world.
The salt mine, which dates as far back as the 17th century, was used for everything from a cheese storage center to a bomb shelter in WWII.
Today, it has been transformed into an incredible underground theme park. The attraction includes everything from an amphitheater to a Ferris wheel. We will also find a mini-golf course and ping pong courts. The tour starts at 9 o’clock in the morning with a pickup from your accommodation in Cluj-Napoca. We will travel a distance of 31 km to Turda Salt Mine. We will have a guided tour in English and afterward, 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 o’clock we will head to the second attraction.
After visiting the salt mine, we will take 30 minutes to drive close to Turda Gorge. The canyon is nearly 3 km long, with 300 m high walls sculpted in weathered limestone. Walking the gorge’s length takes roughly 1½ hours each way. Bring the camera because you will be impressed with the work that a river did inside a mountain in hundreds of millions of years. At first sight, you will see two rocky massifs, which were once one and which were separated by the erosion of Jurassic limestone rock by the river.
We will find here 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, almost all of them of small size. The Gorge is a complex geological, biological, and archaeological preserve. Many of the caves were inhabited by prehistoric man since the Neolithic. This small and wild canyon has a unique fauna and flora. More than 1000 plants and animal species (some of them rare or endangered, like wild garlic or eagle rock), birds, butterflies, fish, amphibians and some mammals (foxes, weasels, Martens) live here. Turda Gorge is accessible for all age tourists, adults, and children. There are areas where you just enjoy walking near the water, hearing always its flow, but there are also portions of the path where you have to keep holding to the metal string attached to the stone wall. Turda Gorge has more than you can wish for: an accessible footpath, a small river, a canyon, some caves, climbing rocks, spots where you can have a picnic by the river.
After the hiking trail, we will head to the 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 populated since the Roman time. 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.
In the center of the village, we will serve a warm Romanian Traditional meal. In the evening we will take you back to your accommodation in Cluj-Napoca.