This Sunday I spent my day with Michael and Renee, 2 Jewish Americans, in search for their family roots. His great grandparents lived in Iasi, and as many others, Michael is interested in any detail that it could lead him to lost family members…

We began our day with a visit to the Jewish Cemetery in Iasi, where in the hope we could spot the names of his family anywhere on the graves we managed to spend about 3 hours there.

As we were about to leave, at the gate we took the time to chat to Olga, the administrator of the cemetery, and Michaela and Adriana, who were visiting the graves of their loved ones. As my clients got more curious about them, Michaela started telling us the story of her life, and the story of her loved ones, who have survived or not the Holocaust in the World War II.

As she never married, she was the last one alive in her family, and she almost cried as she filled us with details of her mother.

After a few more minutes, she started unpacking some lunch, inviting us all for a snack, showing she had so much love and care to offer. Even more, yesterday I received a phone call from her, letting me know some steps my clients could take in finding details about their family in the National Archives.

Adriana on the other hand, was intriguing to me, being quite young. I never noticed any antisemitism in the people I know in Iasi, but she confirmed the fact that some do make nasty remarks towards the Jews, which is quite sad. Hopefully we will get together and discuss this subject again.

Last but not least, misses Olga, the administrator of the cemetery, is a person who seems snappy all the time, but she does love attention. If there are things you want to know about the cemetery, ask her first, else she will be all upset like a small child. She has a very funny character.

After having a wonderful lunch at Bilius House and visiting a few more places of Jewish interest, we took the time to see other landmarks of Iasi, not related to the Jewish Heritage. One of these places is the Culture Palace, built along 2 decades at the beginning of 19 century.

The exterior of the building impresses everyone, and finally they have started restoring it. Some sources say it will take about 3 years to restore, but I think they are being optimistic. During the restoration the Palace is fully closed. Nonetheless, we managed to sneak inside…seems the guards have decided to make their own visiting tour of the Palace.

It is first time when I managed to take a few photos of the main hall, with its detailed decorations and stained glass windows.

This tour that they decided on their own to create, is a visit through the maze of halls leading to the Clock Tower. After almost getting lost through those rooms, we enter the attic where the heat will literally take your breath away, and you will have the sweat running ” in places you didn’t know it could run”, to quote Renee.

Once you reached the tower, the air is much more cool, and you can study the clock mechanism with its 6 bells, which every hour will sing the Union song.

From up here you can enjoy a panoramic view over Iasi city, and especially Stephen the Great boulevard.

As I am a curious person, I started questioning the guard, and it seems the tower is open only once a year, on Iasi days (14th October). I was just about to ask him if he was aware we were in July.

Now now, I will not complain…I finally managed to see the things I didn’t thought I could, and to be honest, I believe the guards would make much better managers for the Palace, than whom ever is in charge now.

We ended our day with a view from Bucium hill over the Iasi city.

Romania is a country where you can have a great range of adventures. It could be driving ATV’s through mountain routes, doing kayaking on some of the rivers, you could even do Bungee Jumping at Vidraru Lake, fly with a hot air balloon over the beautiful fields of this country…but….

I can bet with you that you did not thought you could have this type of adventure:

What you see in these photos is a brilliant idea we had, to try a new forestry road connecting Poiana Marului to Muntele Mic, about 40 km far from Caransebes, 3 weeks back or so.

Due to the rains that have been going on the past few days in the area, the side of the road collapsed under my front right wheel…and despite our efforts to get the car out we still needed a jeep to pull us out. I should mention here that our fuel tank was almost empty, so the situation could have been much worse.

As any photographer, I let my boyfriend to go find the jeep, and I remained to “guard” the car…and while laughing at the situation I wanted proof of what had happened.

The first thing that came to my mind when I evaluated the situation we were in…Thank god it is insured. Though I have to warn you…do not try this at home…or even better…just get a 4×4 if you want to give this sort of road a go…

Yet this was not enough to ruin our plans, so we continued our drive towards Timisoara…No…not on the same road, but the road we came in at first.

Somewhere near Buzias city, we managed to enjoy this beautiful peaceful sunset…as if nothing happened.

Now I hope these photos did not scare you, and you will still use our services.

PS: I am looking at options in aquiring a 4×4.

My rating:

I discovered this B&B as it was just given in use at the beginning of April 2008. Rated with 3 daisies, this B&B is a gem in my opinion.

Furnished in a modern style, with flat screen TV’s, wireless internet, breakfast included in the small tariffs, and with the strategic location on the side of Danube right in downtown, this B&B deserves entirely the 5 star rating I am giving.

Yesterday I took off from Iasi with my destination Tulcea, where my boyfriend had to attend a course. The itinerary passed through Vaslui - Tecuci - Galati - Isaccea  to finally reach Tulcea. After crossing the ferry over the Danube at Galati, in about 10-15 km we saw a sign for Dinogetia Fortress. We took the dirt road that the sign was pointing to (later we found out that the sign was put there by the fortress guard and not by any officials), and drove on the side of a pond until we reached Dinogetia.

Dinogetia is a roman-byzantine fortress located on the side of the Danube, where Siret and Prut meet, dating back to the Dacian times, its name being preserved by the Romans and Byzantines.

Once we reached the fortress we met mister Gheorghita, the guardian and guide of the fortress. His father worked here since 1968, and he took over the job in 1990. He was kind enough to show us around and tell us a bit about the history of the fortress, which has also been his home since childhood.

The fortress is ongoing some restoration at the moment and seems in august they will start some more digging. The place looks charming with its ancient run down walls, the grass growing all over, the beautiful landscape all around. It is definitely worth a go.

Entrance is 2 lei/person.

My rating:

Do not be fooled by the website informations on this B&B in Shanagarry/Ireland. On the outside everything seems OK…nice location etc. The place basically looked like a normal house…with clothes thrown all over in the living room, a boy playing games on the computer in the lobby, everyone just having a normal family night.

We were taken to our rooms, and after I looked around I came to the conclusion that the toilet has not been clean after the previous guest, the sheets did not seem to have been changed for a while either, the carpet needed some vacuuming.

This being said there was little we could do about it at that hour, since we were quite tired after the long drive we had that day.

The new day brought a new experience for breakfast. Our host seemed quite disturbed we were few minutes late than the hour we mentioned the night before, also she was a bit snappy, since she had to take her son to school.

The kitchen really put us off and we did not really feel like eating anymore. She took a long time to make breakfast, the place looked messy…bottom line is that the place needed quite a bit of cleaning (dirty sink, dirty floor, garbage needing to be taken out).

We were happy to leave the place…but if you want to give it a try you can find it here:

http://www.whitelodgebb.com/

Shanagarry, East Cork
County Cork, Ireland
Tel:+353 (0)21 4646107
Mobile: 086 8839218

I have been spending quite a bit of time in the Retezat Mountains lately, or better said close to them. It was about time for me to explore more than the outskirts of the forests of the Retezat National Park (had 2 attempts in winter, but had to give up due to the amount of snow), so today me and Cosmin, left bravely towards Rotunda cabin and drove until the end of the forestry road at Gura Bucurei, with our destination…Bucura lake.

Bucura lake is a very beautiful glacier lake, the biggest in Romania, situated at 2040 meters altitude at the base of Peleaga peak.

Do not let yourself fooled by the marking towards the lake saying 1.5 - 2 hours walking time…probably that time is for people who are very fit, and used to hiking :)…

With shame I admit it probably took me about 3.5-4 hours to get to the Bucura lake, but in my defense, we did make quite a few stops on the way.

The route to the lake is quite charming, passing through the Pelegii meadow, especially once the forest finishes and you reach about 2000 meter altitude. You will climb some rocks, cross some rivers, enjoy the horses grazing (I am not sure if this is very unusual but one of the colts had blue eyes)…and of course enjoy the amazing mountains which surround you with their peaks.

The weather up there can be quite moody, so you should bring something warmer with you even if down it is warm or even hot.

As I got closer, I could enjoy the view over Lia lake, than as Bucura lake showed her self in the cradle of the mountains with the tiny tents as igloos protected by small stone fences on its shore, on the left you could also admire Ana lake.

After wandering a bit more around to some smaller ponds which formed a bog, we decided it was about time to start going back down, mostly because I was frozen…yes, you guessed it…I did not bring anything warmer than my shirt.

By the time we reached the road it was 8 pm, so we stopped at Rotunda cabin for dinner, which was quite nice, than continued our road back to Nucsoara, the departing point of the day.