Tag Archives: Tourism

Raining in our expectations

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Monday 29 September 2025 – Today was our last monastery. You’ll probably be glad, having been assailed by multiple images of multiple frescoed walls and ceilings, but stick with me one last time, eh?

The monastery, Voroneț monastery, is about 10km from the Humor monastery, i.e. about 12km from Maridor, where we’re staying. The original idea, as positied in our itinerary, was to be driven over there and to walk back. Given that we awoke to a damp, dismal day, with the prospect of rain for quite a bit of it, this plan didn’t appeal. We agreed with the lady of the house that we would be driven over there and also get a lift back.

After doing battle with a less-than-satisfactory shower which dispensed only less-than-hot water, we had a late breakfast. It was an ample meal, bearing considerable evidence of its rural roots – fried eggs, copious amounts of two sorts of cheese, meatballs, small cocktail-sized sausages, something that Julia the previous evening had described as buttermilk but which was more akin to a thin, somewhat fizzy yoghurt, bread and butter, plum jam and mashed avocado. We managed to get hot water for our tea, so we were well fed up by 10am, when the man of the house came to take us to the monastery. It was raining really quite hard at this point, and, rather engagingly en route, he picked up an elderly chap who was walking to town (a 7km journey) and dropped him off at the pharmacy. Then he took us to the monastery and, to our surprise, told us he’d wait whilst we looked around. This saved us the bother of working out how to get picked up and we were correspondingly grateful.

So: the monastery. It was constructed by Stephen the Great in 1488 over a period of 3 months and 3 weeks to commemorate the victory at Battle of Vaslui. Its walls weren’t painted until 1547, but they obviously did a bang up job, because the monastery has in its time been called the “Sistine Chapel of the East” for its vivid frescoes, which feature an intense shade of blue known in Romania as “Voroneț blue.”

However.

This is what you see as you walk in through the gate.

It’s a sad sight, not too surprising, I suppose. The monastery was deserted soon after 1775, when the Habsburg monarchy annexed the northern part of Moldavia and the monks only returned to Voroneț in 1991. It’s amazing, really, that those frescoes on the other side of the building have survived as well as they have.

The frescoes on the flat wall at the end of the monastery building also have survived well.

The story of the Last Judgement depicted on this wall seems to be similar to that on the narthex at Humor. (Voroneț came first – Ed)

Inside, as usual there was a prohibition on photography, but again, some others were taking  pictures, so I followed suit, as the interior is, like the others, a thing of joy.

For some reason, there was a seismograph installation in the church.

So there it was – our final monastery.

It was still raining as we went outside to be driven back to Maridor. The weather relented occasionally later and enabled Jane to get a couple of non-spattered views across the countryside from our room,

but the weather was too unreliable to risk going out for a walk and disturbing all the neighbourhood dogs, so we spent the rest of the day in sloth, drinking tea and sustaining ourselves with the delicious fudge-like something-or-other that we’d bought at Pasul Palma.

On this trip, we have now visited four of the six or seven painted monasteries of Bucovina which have UNESCO World Heritage status. The frescoed exteriors all date from the 1500s and of course show various levels of deterioration due to the effects of the weather (generally affecting one side more than the others), deficiencies of technique and degree of upkeep. Looking at them in chronological order:

Humor: one of the oldest, it was founded by Prince Petru Rares and painted in 1530. It is known for the rich red pigments but has deteriorated badly on one side.

Moldovița: also founded by Petru Rares and painted in 1532.

Voroneț: built by Stephen the Great in 1488 but not painted until 1547, it was deserted for 200 years between 1774 and 1991and fell into disrepair, hence the considerable deterioration.

Sucevița: founded by the Movilă family and painted in 1581, Sucevița was the last and is considered the finest of them all. Techniques of painting and upkeep had improved over the fifty years since Humor; the monastery was in a sheltered position and was additionally protected by high fortress walls, and as a result it is possible to get an inkling of how spectacular these monasteries must have looked 500 years ago!

We’ve therefore done what we set out to do – a short exploration of the country’s capital, a little hiking in the Carpathian mountains and a visit to probably the best-preserved of the Painted Monasteries. En passant, we’ve also learned a lot of the history of the country, both ancient and modern, seen a variety of its vistas and cultures, enjoyed meeting its people and feel we appreciate the place somewhat more than we did before we first came. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky with the weather, found gin and tonic in most places and didn’t run out of Twinings finest Earl Grey at any point – a most satisfactory set of achievements all round.

All we have to do now is to get home, a process which will take more than one day. The theory goes that we catch a train tomorrow for the six-hour train journey to Bucharest, overnight in Bucharest and finish by taking a ridiculously early flight back to Blighty. Wish us luck.

Sense of Humor failure

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Sunday 28 September 2025 – It was a strangely cold morning. The actual temperature wasn’t as low as it had been the day before, when there was frost on the grass and ice making the painted wooden steps to our bedroom somewhat perilous; but it felt colder, and Madame had a wood burner going in the dining area,

which Roşie (Ginger) appreciated rather more than guard duties. The skies were cloudy, and the sun even peeped through from time to time during the day; but we wore jackets for the day’s hike.

The objective for the day was to visit – you guessed it – another monastery, Mănăstirea Humorului. So, Humor Monastery with a bit of Romanian post-appending of definite articles and so forth – officially a 17km walk. Our information had us starting from a town called Solca, some 20 minutes’ drive away and once again Gabriel was our chauffeur and Daniela his lookout because the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car. They actually dropped us some way beyond Solca towards our destination, thus saving us about 4km of walking along a tarmac road. We were able to start off on a dirt road, which made for a more pleasant walking environment,

at least for the stretch which led to tarmac.

After that, we were on tarmac roads, mainly without sidewalks, for the rest of the walk. To start with, we headed downhill, past a handsome (Catholic) church

and through a village with some idiosyncracies in the housing decor.

Gnomes were a popular decoration

I knew, from the GPS track we’d been provided with, that the route was up and down, with a fairly substantial up in the middle, but hoped that the gentler gradient on offer wouldn’t be too irksome.

Faint hope.

The gradient wasn’t very steep, but there was a 3km stretch where we had to climb 250 metres, which was a relentless and dull trudge. Round every bend, just when you thought “is this the top?”, the uphill road seemed to stretch eternally onwards. However, these things must pass if one simply keeps plodding on, and eventually we got to a point where neither geology or physics could maintain the uphill grind,

at a village called Plesa. It was certainly a plesa to stop and admire the view

and the prospect of sitting down for a bit of a rest. Before Jane allowed us that, though, she had found Something Of Interest for us to investigate, so we headed off down a rough track, which passed a chapel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Just past the chapel, on the left, was a prominent rocky outcrop, topped by  a cross.

The ladder there should give you the clue that not all was as it seems; this set of rocks was the basis for a set of artworks sculpted into the stone. They’re not immediately obvious – someone casually walking along the track might well have missed them.

However, courtesy of Jane’s research, we were In The Know, and so we spent some time investigating. Here’s the close up of the shot above, in which the sculptures are much clearer,

and clambering carefully around revealed several more.

Once back on the road we treated ourselves to a few minutes’ rest and a bite to eat before continuing our walk. We went through a couple of reasonably sizeable villages.  One, Solonețu Nou, distinguished itself in two ways: an attractive architectural vernacular for the well housings;

and probably the noisiest selection of house dogs we’d yet experienced in this country.

To our British eyes, the Romanian habit of cooping up their dogs seems harsh; there are quite a few small enclosures with large dogs in them, with barely room to turn round, far less to get exercise. Many dogs are free in gardens, and we even found a handful in the road, who were noisy but didn’t do anything more than bark. I suppose that these are simply guard dogs, there to alert people to intruders, though I don’t know whether these would be human or animal; and in any case there seemed to be no-one home to be alerted (possibly in itself a reason for the dogs to be agitated). We only ever saw a dog being taken out and exercised a couple of times when we were here. Definitely Cultural Dissonance at work, in more ways than one.

We trudged on. Occasionally the view was good,

and the houses we passed engaging,

(this is a sculptor’s house and atelier – we wonder if he has something to do with the stone sculptures); but it was dull work and there was a reasonable amount of traffic to dodge. Eventually, though, we came to the turn off which led to our accommodation, which was called Maridor.  The track to it led us through some kind of logging operation

out a kilometre or so to a small group of houses;

ours was the big yellow one.

It was open, but deserted, except for a young teenage lad who spoke enough English to show us our room and tell us that dinner would be available at 7pm, but who otherwise seemed (a) not to know any further details and (b) not to be very comfortable in his role. No matter; despite the walk only having been about 13km, I was very tired and in need of rest, so we took it easy for a bit before going for a walk. Obviously.

Humor Monastery was a good 2km away, and the exact way in was not obvious. There was a car park (with several coaches in it), surrounded by the usual keen-eyed entrpreneurial locals

but we eventually found out where we could buy tickets, and we followed the crowds in.

To a building site, sadly; most of the area was fenced off.

Actually, we were sort of lucky – pictures online from a few days earlier showed it covered in scaffolding (it looks as though they had been replacing the roof, judging from its light colour) so at least we were spared that, and could get some idea of the frescoes on the outside.

As with the Moldovița monastery, the frescoes on the windward side had faded sadly

but the external narthex ceiling was still in good shape

as were the frescoes on the entrance wall of the church.

Jane was particularly taken by the elephant

which we think is shown as part of the Noah’s Ark story.

Inside the church there was the usual prohibition against photography, but since people were flagrantly ignoring this and the nuns appeared not to mind, I took a few photos of the interior, which, like them all, is spectacular.

Having seen the monastery, we felt that an ice cream would be Just The Thing, so headed back to the kiosk in the retail-heavy car park, only to find it was closed. Well, Sunday, innit? So we decided to investigate the neighbouring church, which looked very impressive

but was closed. Well, Sunday, innit?

So we started the trudge back to Maridor. We passed some interesting railings outside one place, with representations of the signs of the zodiac;

and, just by our turn off into the boondocks there was a shop which appeared to be open. So we went in. The lady in charge didn’t seem too pleased to see us, but we sorted ourselves out with a couple of bananas, and an ice cream each and paid. As we left the shop, she locked up behind us and drove off! We were lucky to get there in the nick of time, which made up for the earlier ice cream disappointment and went some way to dispelling the sadness at the state of the monastery site; it was such a shame to see it so faded, and slightly irritating to have access so limited. We didn’t get a real sense of what the monastery really looked like (hence the title of this page).

Back at Mirador, all was quiet, and we were actually wondering whether we really would get a dinner. But we did. At 6.55, I went out and the only sign of life was the lad, whose name is Vilanel (he’s just socially awkward, not a psychopathic killer in search of Eve); he assured me that there would be dinner at 7, so we went down and joined Julia and Heather, the ladies we’d met at Casa Felicia, and who were basically a day ahead of us on the Natural Adventure itinerary. It was nice to chat to them again and it gave us a chance to find out some useful information, such as getting to and from the final monastery of this trip and also getting to the train back to Bucharest. Vilanel had been very helpful for them organising taxis and telling them what they needed to know. His parents, who run Maridor, didn’t have much English, but Vilanel’s was good – learned, apparently, more from social media than from school.

So, after a very tasty dinner, we established what would happen on the morrow for our monastery visit and also what the schedule would be for the next day. The weather prospects were dismal, which meant we decided on a variation to the suggested itinerary. Exactly what that was, you will be able to find out by coming back to these pages.

Moldovița – a smaller monastery on a bigger day

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Saturday 27 September 2025 – The half-day’s activity envisaged for today turned into a very enjoyable whole day’s set of activities. The morning was taken up with a visit to another monastery, at Moldovița, a half-hour drive from our accommodation. Our chauffeur was Gabriel, the boyfriend of Daniela, the daughter of the house. I was quite surprised when the car he led us out to was actually a British model, steering wheel on the right-hand side an’everyfink. It turned out that he had only relatively recently left England, where he’d been first studying and then working for a few years; he could legally drive his British car for a total of 90 days before having to do something about it. It was very convenient for us to have a local guide who had such good English, and we were pleased that Daniela also joined us.

I had expected simply to be deposited at the monastery and left to our own devices whilst we wandered around it, but actually the two of them joined us in viewing the monastery, and were able to provide some commentary about it, which was very welcome. It being a Saturday, it was clear that there would be quite a few people there (there was a coach parked outside, for example), but we’d got there early in the hope that the crowds wouldn’t be too oppressive.

Anyway, the monastery: this is the sight that greets you as you enter.

The central church building sits within a pleasant, albeit fortified, complex.

As with Sucevița, the outside is painted with saints and biblical stories. It’s not as large as the one in Sucevița, but it’s still very striking. The frescoes have fared well on one side,

but sadly, on the other,

the prevailing winds and rain have wrought great damage. This church dates from 1532, when Prince Petru Rares built it as a replacement for another church which had collapsed. We went into the church for a look around.

It has an external narthex,

and inside there was the expected ban on photography. However, two things convinced me that I could get away with taking a few pictures: Gabriel said that it should be all right; and other visitors were brazenly taking photos anyway. I think maybe the use of flash is what the monastery was particularly trying to avoid. So, here are a few pictures of the inside, which, as with the others, is hugely ornately painted.

In preparation for the day, Jane had, as ever, been researching other things to see in the area, and she had come up with a very unusual-sounding option – a decorated egg museum, just a couple of minutes drive away. Daniela and Gabriel were happy to take us there so we could look around. It’s actually the residence of a specific artist, Lucia Condrea, and is situated at the end of a row of pretty houses.

We paid the entrance fee (though I discovered later that we could have simply sneaked in through the front door) and were treated to an explanation of a film of the artist actually creating coloured eggs, using a batik technique, which involves covering with wax the parts of an egg that should not be coloured, before immersing the egg in a colouring dip – and then repeating the process with different colours; so the artist has to visualise the pattern as a negative rather than a positive image. It was interesting to see the film… but the place is astonishing. Lucia Condrea has created over fifteen thousand eggs in her lifetime, and the interior shows a stupefying variety of sizes, shapes, patterns and colours.

There is huge elaboration in the eggs,

and the artist has taken, as her inspiration, patterns from fabrics, from other cultures, and many and various sources. There are a couple of pictures of her on the walls with local dignitaries.

Upstairs, there are a couple of rooms dedicated to eggs from other places, literally all over the world.

It was nice to see Britain represented

and we were particularly taken by these, from New Zealand.

How do they do that?

There were eggs for sale in the place, but we didn’t have sufficient cash and they didn’t have a working card machine, so we left empty-handed and started the journey back to Sucevița. The journey takes you over some hills and past some great views; Gabriel had said on the way out that we could stop at one viewpoint on our way back, and so we did.  It was called Pasul Palma and had a couple of kiosks there, but not evidently a huge amount else. I thought it was just to look at the view, which was indeed great,

but actually we spent quite a lot of time there for one reason or another. Taking coffee was one reason, and we sat overlooking the view as we drank it.  It turns out that the place also offfers guided horse rides

and there’s a zip wire across the valley, too; we watched a few people whizzing down the wire as we drank our coffee. Across the road from these kiosks was a huge sculpture of a hand

which is the logo of the place – “palma” means palm, as in palm of the hand, and the place, according to Gabriel, is to acknowledge the hard manual labour undertaken by people in rebuilding the country (or some such – he wasn’t absolutely certain of this). Anyway, the sculpture was, as one might expect, a nexus for some nifty Romanian entrepreneurship.

There were stalls selling liqueurs, cheeses

folk remedies, and tourist tat, of course.

Daniela and Gabriel bought a couple of things, and we got some home-made chocolatey thing which took our fancy.  Then Daniela mentioned fried potatoes. So we went to the final kiosk in this area

which sold, courtesy of a chap out the back,

the local equivalent of chips. These would be cooked to order and ready in 15 minutes, we were told, so there was nothing for it but to buy a beer and do some more sitting and admiring the view.

Overall, this was a pleasant and unexpected interlude, which was fairly closely followed by another. We had discussed walking up a (reportedly very steep) path to a chapel which gave a view of the Sucevița monastery from above. Our information said that the route going up was so steep that coming down it was not recommended and that you should follow a different path for which it provided vague instructions – “you cannot get lost”. Heather at dinner had said she’d tried to follow the instructions for this and had got lost, ending up walking along a track made by a tractor to get down. Doing this climb had been one of the things I had been considering for my afternoon’s adventure, but Daniela said that there was an easier path that led from their very house and gave a better view. So, having completed our journey back to Casa Felicia, that’s what we did instead.

We went through the back garden, past the chickens

and a terribly cute puppy called Mimi, who, like many dogs in Romania, was kept in an enclosure. More on this sort of thing in a future post, but for now, we scrambled about a bit up a steep path through pasture and entered a forested area.

Apparently, the right to roam in Romania is pretty absolute – you can walk more or less wherever you like even if it’s private property. We think we covered a mix of private and government land, but we’re not sure, as the maps are not very accurate. There were some very attractive, but probably deadly, mushrooms growing as we made our way through the forest.

There wasn’t a path as such, but Daniela and Gabriel seemed to know where they were going (with a couple of discussions…) and we emerged at the top of a hill, where we could see the monastery, but largely hidden by intervening tree branches. We made our way down to where one could get a better view

at which point Daniela told us that the best path led back up another hill where we would get a really good view. So we did that. It led past some fairly serious logging

which Gabriel said was quite possibly illicit, but not uncommon since policing the forests was very difficult. We carried on to a path that was very steep in places

but we staggered our way up it and emerged at the top, where there is a cross and a really very good view of the monastery and the countryside.

Opposite us, on the other side of the monastery, was the hill up to the chapel

where we could make out a few hardy souls toiling upwards. We, of course, now had to get down from our vantage point

which was also quite steep, but not too daunting. It also gave us a nice aerial view of the small church and graveyard associated with the monastery.

When we got down, we walked past the church to take a look at it, and one could look back up the hill we’d just descended.

In fact, in this picture of the church, you can just make out the cross at the top of the hill.

Yes, you can.

Our route back to our accommodation took us past the monastery, and we called in to see what time they closed. Jane had seen a photo of the monastery illuminated at night, and we very much wanted to see that if possible. We got a very uncertain answer about closing time, so decided that we’d go back after dinner to see if it was still open. We arrived at 7pm, and the door was open so we went in, past the (now closed) closed ticket office. There were still people there, mainly, it seemed, making their way out after some kind of special occasion.

We waited for it to get dark, expecting to be ushered out, but we weren’t. There was some singing coming over the sound system, so I got some slightly atmospheric video of the monastery church at twilight.

It got darker and darker, and everybody else left, so we were pretty much alone – and waiting by the entrance just to make sure we didn’t get locked in.

It got to the point where we realised that they weren’t going to turn on any illuminations. I suppose it makes sense – why spend money on electricity if there’s no-one there to see the result? Maybe they just do it on winter afternoons, when there will be crowds there, or possibly just special occasions. Anyway, not tonight, Josephine. So we made our way back to Casa Felicia and made our preparations for leaving the next day.

The morrow held a visit to another monastery, which we would reach by a longish walk of some 17km. The weather prospects were not as good as today’s but promised rain should at least hold off for the day. So come back to find out how our day went.