And then we heard a crash...

Wow, we walked about 15 kms (9 miles) yesterday. The temperature was pleasant, with a high of about 9C (48F) but there was no sunshine. Overcast all day,

The apartment where we're staying is on the eastern outskirts of this city of 100,000 people or so. We decided to leave the car parked where it was and walk into the city. We were due for some exercise anyhow. And, we've learned that you see a lot more when you're walking.

Pulled over by the police in Transnistria

After our Purcari wine tour, we had stayed the night at a small hotel in the town of Stefan Voda, only about 20 kms (12 miles) from the winery. It's a convenient location if the rooms at the winery are fully booked.

Not the greatest sleep, because the bed was hard as a rock...but other than that, for 500 lei ($35 CAD, $26.50 USD) a night it was fine.

Then yesterday morning, it was off to Transnistria!

It's not often we talk about politics...

But I felt it was important to give some background on the area that we are now visiting.

We're now in the country of Transnistria. Officially called the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The problem is that this country doesn't really exist.

Oh, it's a country. It has its own border, its own border guards, its own passports, its own government, its own parliament, its own currency, and its own military.  Yes, it's a country.

The best wine in Moldova!

Yesterday, we drove about two hours south of the capital of Chisinau to the little town of Purcari, located on the Moldova - Ukraine border. There, we found the Purcari Winery.

Of course Moldova is famous for it's fine wines. When I began doing research about our trip to Moldova, the name Purcari kept coming up, and so it was one of the places that we really wanted to visit. Purcari is just a small vineyard...but they have a big history!

The largest wine cellar in the world

The other day we visited the underground wine cellars at Cricova Winery. They are listed as the second largest wine cellar in the world. Yesterday, we visited the largest wine cellar in the world!

Yes, the tiny, unknown country of Moldova has the two largest wine cellars in the world.

The one we visited yesterday at Milestii Mici Winery contains over 2 million bottles of wine.

November Expenses

I was going to wait and publish our expenses for the entire trip. And when we're finished maybe I'll do that anyhow, because it would be a good exercise to show how much we spend per day on a six week journey. But for now, here's where we stood for the month of November...

We started off the month of November in the city of Ottawa, and so I've included our travel expenses for the one way journey to get to Europe. Despite the fact that we actually paid for the tickets last June, they're being expensed in the month we use them to make it a more accurate representation of how much we spend.

Walking tour of downtown Chisinau, Moldova

We walked over to pick up our car rental yesterday morning. It's been pure luck that every time we've booked a car rental on this trip, the office has been really close to where we're staying. This time, it was only a fifteen minute walk.

They gave us a little Ford Fiesta for 18 euros per day. We're keeping the car for nine days. This place accepts credit cards, but when I went to pay they said it would cost 3% extra to use the card. Okay, whatever. Not a big deal. I wanted to use the card because I have total rental vehicle coverage through our Visa card. So, it cost an extra $7 or so for that. Oh, and an extra 20 euros for the paperwork to be able to take the car to Transnistria.

We're all on the same page...

We relaxed for the morning and did some laundry. Just before the noon hour, we hopped on the local bus and headed downtown to meet our AirBnb host Gloria. She wanted to see the refurbished Moldova National Museum of Art, and asked if we wanted to go with her. Sure!

The museum had been closed for twenty years because the building itself was in such sad shape. It officially reopened November 4th of this year.

The underground wine city of Cricova

Moldova is not a well known country, especially in North America. But if anybody knows it, they know it for it's wines. The tiny country (1/10th the size of California) produces about 66 million liters of wine per year.

There are about 45 commercial wineries in Moldova, and 10 of them are open to public tours. In no particular order, we plan to visit three of them during our time here. Yesterday, we visited the second largest wine cellar in the world, at the Cricova underground wine city!

The Orheiul Vechi Cave Monastery in Moldova

For our first full day in Moldova, we had been trying to get in to see one of the two largest wine cellars in the world. Both, are located right here in tiny Moldova! But, you need a reservation, and they were all booked up so there was nothing available for the last minute. We made reservation for 11:00am this morning, so you'll hear about that in tomorrow's blog post.

Instead, we went with our friend Andrei to the Orheiul Vechi Historical Sitenear the village of Trebujeni.

Travel Day - Iasi to Chisinau, Moldova

Well, we are now in the Republic of Moldova...the least visited country in Europe!

We are staying in Moldova for 10 to 14 days, first basing ourselves in the capitol city of Chișinău (pronounced Kish-i-now) (pop 650,000). We have a car rental booked for a week starting Saturday so that we can do some day trips. And after our week in the capital, we will stay somewhere else in Moldova.

Road trip to the painted monasteries of northern Romania

One of the things Ruth had on her Romania bucket list was to see the UNESCO listed painted monasteries of the Moldavian region of Romania.

We were running out of time, and it didn't look like it was going to be easy to do. But that's one of the reasons we made a quick two day stop here in Iasi. And, it's the reason we rented a car here.

We set off on a road trip at around 8:00am yesterday morning.

Another shady car rental deal

We arrived in Iasi (pronouced Ee-ash) early yesterday morning and didn't waste any time. We only had the one day to see the city itself, so even though we were a bit tired from our overnight train journey we headed out as soon as we got things settled.

And, we had organized a car rental for our time here. We didn't really need it for yesterday, but we wanted to do a long day trip today so by picking it up yesterday we could get an early start today.

A moment of panic...

Well, it was an interesting 24 hours, just as I figured it might be! But, we are now here in the city of Iași (pop 316,000) at the far eastern edge of Romania. We are only about 25 kms (15 miles) from the border of The Republic of Moldova. And we are at our AirBnb guesthouse...just as planned.

But it almost didn't happen that way. And there was the odd moment of panic.

It's going to be an interesting 24 hours...

Yesterday was a relaxing day, just like we planned.

It's tough when you're visiting a new country and you don't want to waste any time. There's too much to see and do and we don't want to miss any of it. But, we've learned that you need to take some down time. Yesterday's weather wasn't the nicest, so we took our time in the morning, got caught up on some computer things, and after lunch I had nap.

Another birthday, another country...

Happy 55th to my beautiful wife Ruth today as we once again celebrate her birthday in a new country. Last year we were in Colombia. We don't expect this trend to end anytime soon, so I wonder where we'll be for next year's birthday?!

We learned a couple of years ago that birthdays are not going to be travel days. Birthdays are relax days. Plus, it's raining today and we've pretty much exhausted the immediate area of things to see and do.

We are, however, going out for dinner!

Arsenal Park and a 2,000 year old ruins site

Interesting day yesterday as we first went to a Soviet military theme park, and then up into the mountains to the remains of a Dacian settlement from 2,000 years ago.

Had to put fuel in the car for the first time. This car is a diesel, and the onboard trip computer said that we were averaging 4.2 l/100 kms. That's 56 mpg! Wow! We had already driven over 800 kms (500 miles) and still had a quarter tank. It cost 150 lei ($49.50 CAD, $36 USD) to fill it up.

Searching for the tunnel of love...

A bit of a late start as we fight with internet connection problems here at the guest house. Frustrating, because the reviews had all mentioned how good the internet was at this particular place, but other than the very first day, we've had nothing but problems. Good thing I have the iPhone with a Romanian SIM card as a back up.

Anyhow, with the blog finally posted we headed out with two destinations in mind. One was to see the oldest church in Romania, and the other was to find the tunnel of love!

Now, *this* is a castle!

But before we get to that, I have to tell you our decision on yesterday's travel choice from Alba Iulia to Iasi. We decided to buy the first class sleeper tickets at $71 each.

After the fact, reader "iwasthere" suggested that we could fly from Cluj to Iasi for about $40 each. I looked it up, and that is partly correct. But the best I could find was actually $54 each, plus the cost of one bag at $32. So, approximately the same amount of money as the sleeper berth on the train.

Travel day...and some choices to make!

Yesterday was a travel day. We were driving 164 kms (102 miles) from Apuseni National Park to the village of Teliucu Inferior, which is located about 5 kms (3 miles) south of the famous Corvin Castle which we will be visiting at some point over the next few days.

Having a rental car has made our time here in Romania quite a lot more expensive than we originally planned, but it sure is convenient and we now think it's worth the extra expense for this particular country. We think if we had to do it all over again, we would have booked a rental for the entire month. Rentals for more than 2 weeks at a time get considerably cheaper on a "per day" basis.

It's always an adventure...

Our host here at the Cota 1000 Chalet had given us some ideas of things to do in the area, and yesterday morning we drove what was supposed to be a circular route with several stops at caves.

But the very narrow mountain road was partly covered in ice at some sections, and despite our snow tires and my Canadian winter driving skills, we had to turn around and go at it from a different direction.

The things we do to get to a waterfall...

On the road at 9:15am yesterday. Not bad.

We're on the edge of Apuseni National Park, and it's not easy driving. We didn't have a long distance to drive, only about 85 kms (53 miles), but I figured that's at least a two hour drive on these roads. Plus, we needed to stop and take photos along the way!

A perfect day in Romania!

We woke up early yesterday, had breakfast at the guest house, and hit the road by 9:30am. We headed for a nearby gorge, hoping to do a hike through the gorge.

It was looking to be a beautiful day and because it was Saturday we figured the area might be busy and we wanted to beat the crowds.

Finally...a rental car!

Wow, what a circus trying to get a rental car here. Actually, I should qualify that...if we were willing to pay 25 euros ($36 CAD, $27 USD) per day, then it would have been quick and easy. But during low season, there's no way we're paying that kind of money for a ten day rental.

So we had arranged to get a car yesterday morning at 10:00am, but shortly before that they had called to cancel, saying that the people who have the car they were expecting back were keeping it for three more days. They offered the phone number of another place that might be able to help.

And once again, our couchsurfing host Gaby came through for us!

So, maybe things were meant to happen this way...

Spent much of yesterday morning on the phone and the internet trying to organize a car rental. Lots of thanks to our couchsurfing host Valentina for all of her translation efforts! Some of the car rental websites have English, but not all.

We ended up with a pretty good deal...162 euros ($233 CAD, $173 USD) for 10 days, but we were going to have to go 100 kms north of here to the city of Cluj by bus to pick up the car. So we made plans to do that this morning.

And then, it turned out all of that effort was for nothing.

Gastronomic Adventures in Southeastern Spain: A Taste of Murcia

Traditionally when someone mentions Spain, the first things that spring to mind are the glorious, soft-sandy beaches, refreshing sangrias, colorful local festivals and of course, the wonderful Spanish cuisines native to its regions. From the popular Spanish Costas, the emerald islands of the Balearics and the Canaries and even to the leading Spanish cities of Barcelona and Madrid.

Spain has attractions galore which are sure to appeal to the preferences of visitors in Murcia.

We were due for some exercise!

I said yesterday that we were due for a more relaxing day, but I didn't expect it to be yesterday. Still, we did manage to get out for some exercise. We're trying to plan our onward travels but we're having a hard time coming up with something concrete, and part of the problem is that we're enjoying our time here in the village of Oarda de Sus.

We need to rent a car because there are several day trips we want to do from here. But the car rental places here base their daily pricing on how many days you have the car.

Now, this is a civilized way to buy wine!

It was 11:00am by the time we got out the door yesterday morning. It takes a long time to sort the photos of our activities and post the blog. I guess we have to stop doing so much stuff. We are kind of due for a relax day, but I don't see that happening any time soon...there is too much to see and do!

Our couchsurfing host Valentina was going into town, so we went along with her and she dropped us off at one of the entrances to the citadel here in central Alba Iulia.