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.
who led us through five kilometres of huge architectural variation and 20 centuries of turbulent history. When explaining how the country of Romania and the city of Bucharest have developed, his explanations almost always started, “It’s complicated….”. Frankly, given the history, I’m not bloody surprised.
which are being developed as a museum. The restaurant itself used to be a caravanserai, a place where merchants would come and stay to do business, for days or even months, before moving on. The caravanserai occupied what is now the courtyard that we ate in. Interestingly, the paving leading into it
is not stone, but wood.
Apparently, much of Bucharest was once paved with wood, although not of this high quality.The route of our tour led us through the Old Town, some of which remains, but much of which was demolished in the communist era.
Some buildings have a distinctive red disc on them
which means that they are at risk of falling down if there’s another earthquake (there was a big one in 1977 which destroyed a lot of Bucharest, but not as much as the communists did, apparently).Many of these fine buildings are really quite dilapidated, Horia suggested that this is a combination of neglect under the communist regime (if they didn’t actively tear them down) and current private ownership which has neither the funds nor the will to pay for the upkeep.That said, there are many quirky corners of the old town.
and its streets are thickly populated with bars and restaurants.
There is so much to the old town that I can’t possibly do it justice without you drowning in photos, but it’s a great place to walk around, with a lively vibe – and plenty of crowds.The other thing there are a lot of is churches; Romania is a very religious country, as we saw in the devoted obeisances paid by people in the churches we visited. Some were in the old town, some outside that area. A big attraction for tourists and locals alike in the old town is the church of the “Stavropoleos” Monastery, which is beautifully decorated outside
and in.
Of course, the communist era ranked very highly in Horia’s itinerary. We visited Revolution Square, site of what was the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee building (now the Ministry of the Interior)
where one can see the balcony from which Ceausescu gave his final speech before realising that there was going to be an uprising which would unseat him.
I remember seeing the news coverage of that speech, and the look of panic on his face as he realised that he’d lost control of the people and that the peasants really were revolting.We passed the Palace Hall, a 1960s communist era building
which now bears the scars of the revolution that unseated Ceausescu in the form of bullet holes.
It’s not the only building with bullet holes scarring it – there are others, reflecting the desperate efforts of Ceausescu to retain power by ordering his troops to gun down the rebels, which only delayed his unseating by one day – but it was a very bloody day.Our tour ended at the parliament building, which is simply immense – the heaviest building in the world and largest apart from the Pentagon, apparently.
It was started in 1984, in the Ceausescu era and by the time he was deposed it was 70% finished and by then more costly to destroy than to finish. Accordingly, it was finished in 1997, and now has some 4,000 rooms in it. As well as serving as police, military and secret service headquarters, it apparently pays its way through tours, exhibitions and other events, but consumes a significant portion of the city’s electricity if all the lights are on.Other churches we visited included the Cathedral of the Patriarchy, which is south of the old town and is a striking building with a beautiful courtyard beside it.
Inside is, like the others we visited, elaborately decorated.
another building which is beautifully appointed outside and in.
