Bucharest - Day 2

Well, it was really raining quite hard this morning, worse luck.  Our driver for the day, and tomorrow, Adrian, was running a half hour late. It turns out that the traffic was backed up for miles given the rain, and we saw that this was the case as we left the city itself. Anyway, we got going at around 8:30 am.

Much of the countryside as we headed for Bulgaria was similar to and other rural areas, lovely and green, especially with sunflower farms along the roadway. It was interesting to notice the changes in the style of houses as we travelled along. Much of these changes brought about by the end of the Communist Rule back in the 1980’s. Dwellings went from high rise flats all crammed together supposedly to provide more room for the farms to grow crops, but Adrian says this was so that they could have the people all living together in new flats so they could put microphones in the walls to overhear the criticisms against the regime. Since that time people have built free standing houses. Getting across the border between Romania and Bulgaria was an interesting exercise.  First you pay a toll to cross the Bridge which forms the real Border half way across it. The a little further on you come to the place where you show your passports. You hand them over and move the car to await the return of said passports (that took 15 minutes), then you are in Bulgaria. On the way we were able to see some storks. These were up in their nest which was sitting on top of a light pole. We were able to see an adult and a baby stork, now that’s something you don’t see every day!!

From here we travelled for kilometres to our first stop Arbanasi.  Here we walked around the quaint little village, visited a Turkish style house built back in the 1500’s and which is now a Museum. This place was quite different in that it was cement and stone base of the house and wooden upper. This wood was very solid and in the rooms above, and quite decorative.

We then went into a VERY unusual Christian Orthodox Church, The Church of the Nativity. Every square inch of the inside of the Church was decorated with pictures/paintings depicting the Calender of the year, and the religious happenings of that particular day. The rest of the Church was covered with paintings depicting various Bible Stories and also this religion’s beliefs.  It really was an amazing and interesting place, and the worst part was that they wouldn’t let us take photos (I did buy a book with some of the photos in it though because it was so unusual). We then went to a nice little Restaurant, Mehana Izvora, where we had a very nice lunch.  Dave even ordered and ate lamb!! And he enjoyed it.  This place had a lot of little animals in enclosures, and a couple of Peacocks one who opened his tail just as we were leaving, but I couldn’t quite get the front shot.  He seemed to know I wanted a photo and did not oblige.

After a leisurely lunch we travelled on to Veliko Tarmovo (meaning Great Market) on the Yantra River. Here there was a very big Fortress high on the hill, and lower down was an obelisk surrounded by a sculpture of the 4 kings of the area in times gone by. This town had some very unusual images carved in 3 layers of concrete adorning some of the walls on bigger buildings in the town. We visited a couple of craftsmen working with their old fashioned tools to craft some beautiful silver jewellery, and also a place where the fellows were crafting copper wear. One old man was sitting on a step whittling away making animals. This town was really nice.

When it was time to come back across the Bridge and into Romania, the line of cars and trucks was sooo long, it took us ages to pay the toll and get through.  Then of course, it was the passport checkpoint again, but it was quicker this time. Adrian then took us around to his home to meet his wife and daughter, and have a coffee.  He has a lovely home in a nice area and he is very proud of it. He has quite a few fruit trees etc and his Dad insisted that we try the raspberries, they were lovely. What a great day we had had.  We look forward to tomorrow when we visit Transylvania.