{"id":4952,"date":"2015-06-19T18:21:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=4952"},"modified":"2015-06-19T18:21:52","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:21:52","slug":"romania-final-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=4952","title":{"rendered":"Romania Final 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our time in Romania is finished. We visited north east Romania to see painted monasteries and then went south to Bucharest before taking the train to Bulgaria. Our last two visits in Romania were an amazing way to cap an spectacular journey through the country. Just like before, we found beautiful scenery, incredibly friendly & helpful people, wonderful sights, delicious food, and everything was a good value. We\u2019ve been away from Romania for a little over a week and we already talk about our eventual return.<\/p>\n

I had mentioned researching things to do in Romania was a bit difficult; there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of information. Jacquelyn found a place in NE Romania near Ukraine with a bunch of painted monasteries. The pictures online were OK and the area was REALLY far away from everything in Romania so I felt we were taking a bit of a leap to visit. I am very, very, very, happy we decided to go. Just like everything else in Romania, it turned out to be absolutely amazing and all the information online did the area no justice. We\u2019ve never seen anything quite like the 500 year old painted monasteries. The monastery paintings are stories from the bible and the important people in the church so the average folks, who were illiterate, could understand all the important things of their religion. Interior murals are quite different than the exterior murals; they are gruesome depicting people being burned, boiled, stabbed, ripped apart by animals and so on. I asked our guide why so many paintings where of people being killed and dying horrible deaths and he told us that they are the important saints and the paintings are of how the saints died. That was pretty cool considering I remember we learned a lot about the saints in church school but I don\u2019t really remember learning a lot about how they died<\/p>\n

We spent nearly nine hours touring around to the different monasteries and it seems like we could have spent a couple more days staring at the walls. The It was amazing to see how well the murals held up after 500yrs of exposure to sun, snow, rain, heat and cold. Each monastery was a little bit different and had its own character. Much like everywhere else in Romania, there were only a handful of other tourists and we were really able to enjoy the monasteries free from interruption.<\/p>\n

Our time in Bucharest was pretty good. We aren\u2019t really city people so we don\u2019t really know what to do with ourselves in a big city. Probably the most odd thing we saw was the Parliamentary Palace which is the second largest administration building in the world after the Pentagon. The construction started towards the end of the communist period and the architecture of the building really shows it. The building really is huge, just massively huge. I uploaded a photo and it doesn\u2019t do it justice. If possible, try to zoom in to see the window air conditioners \u2013 they are normal size but look super tiny. Otherwise, the city is a lot like other European capitols with similar architecture, city squares, pedestrian areas, and plenty of restaurants and bars.<\/p>\n

Romania is quite the place. Some of the locals said we were \u201cbrave\u201d and other travelers mentioned we were \u201cdaring\u201d for traveling to Romania. We have no idea why as traveling around was super easy and everything went nearly perfect. Many countries we\u2019ve visited have great features but few countries have amazing attractions, great people, beautiful scenery, great food, great values, and, most importantly, relatively easy access to the things we want to visit. Of everywhere we\u2019ve visited, I can only think of three other countries with similar characteristics. The experiences and photos I shared barely scratch the surface of our awesome experience in Romania, they were just the highlights. Our day to day travels had many other great experiences. We were sad to go and we miss Romania a lot.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the photos!<\/p>\n

Chris W.<\/p>\n

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