Bâlea Lac — Local services in Cârțișoara

While the ride and the view at the top is beautiful, this is by far the rudest experience we’ve had in Romania. First, we arrive and wait nearly two hours before they’ll take us up, citing wind. However, we see cable cars coming down and later realize they didn’t want to take us up because it was close to their break time. Then, when we try to go back down at the time they told us, a medium height, thin man with glasses (who wouldn’t tell me his name) rudely tells us they won’t take us down unless we want to pay the price of 10 people in the car and takes us over to the wall and shows us literal 10 font writing in English that says they prefer to operate with 8 people in each car. We have a two-year old with us who is becoming increasingly cold and upset because we planned to go down at the time they told us so she could take her nap. He then tells us they save money by filling up the cars and it’s not efficient enough to take us down. They had given us a time to come down that they didn’t honor. Meanwhile, we counted no less than 6 men “working” to run two cars that go up and down barely once every two hours. Plan for several hours waiting with poor...

Visited Bâlea Lake at the end of August while taking the Transfăgărășan road. The lake sits at the highest point of the road, around 2,000m, and the drive up is half the experience—tight hairpins, tunnels, and insane mountain views.

That said, timing matters. Go early, before 11 AM. After that, the traffic jams start and parking becomes a nightmare. We arrived at 9:30 AM and had space to breathe; by noon it was busy.

The lake itself is small but scenic, with a couple of chalets for food and souvenirs. Prices are touristy but not crazy. If you’re into hiking, there are trails heading deeper into the Făgăraș Mountains. Even just walking away from the main crowd for 10 minutes changes the vibe completely.

Tips for travelers:

Bring layers; it was 10°C at the top even though the valley was warm.

If you’re not driving, there’s a cable car from Bâlea Cascadă—but expect queues later in the day.

Avoid weekends if you can; it gets packed with cars and bikes.

Would I recommend it? 100%. Just don’t expect solitude unless you earn it by hiking away from the...

Bâlea Lake is beautiful, definitely worth of going there. However, cable car is closed at the moment without any notice online!! I wish I could have taken it and then explored lake surroundings but instead I had time only to get to the lake. I was very disappointed with the way they handled this cable car default. But if you have a car/bike it's amazing to experience the famous road (it should be open only in July but now in June there were cars...