Although for many years my childhood village was enough to spend much of my vacation / vacation, I recently proposed to see the nearby places, at least.
Last year I started to visit the monasteries in the area (not what you think 🙂), Bucovina that is, famous for them and did not dislike me. There is the proverbial silence that is needed from time to time. You also remember a little history, you can also see beautiful and well-kept buildings.
Look, in Dolhasca, which I mentioned above, we have a monument included, in 1993, on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Probota Monastery. Monastery of nuns built in 1530 by Petru RareÅŸ (what I was saying about history). I had not seen her for years, but in the last year I went there three times, it's also handy to me and it's great.
But come back, because it is not (mon) only. So we were somewhat in the area, and I said it would not be bad to review places seen in distant childhood, more than 20 years ago (!). Let us remember, let's see what has changed, how it has changed, to see what we do not remember again. And there were many.
First, we passed Ozana "the beautiful flowing" to get into the Craggy Humulus, overcrowded, which is not very bad, but I barely managed to take a picture without a man in it, the one below. The house is well maintained and the entrance costs 15 lei. Here, more than 15 min. you have no reason to stay.
Then, the city of Neamţ, which, the last time I saw it, was only ruins. It was rehabilitated only in 2009, somewhat recently, and now looks like in the time of Peter I, at the end of the century. XIV, or, better, Stephen the Great 🙂:
"If you are really Stefan,
Then you here without victory
You can not come in with my will.
Go to the army! For the country you die!
And your tomb will be crowned with flowers! "
from "Mummy of Stephen the Great" (1857) by Dimitrie Bolintineanu.
Mentions about it also appear in Sobieski and Romanians, by Negruzzi (if we are still going back to childhood and what we learned at school).
It's about 10 minutes from the footpath to climb, a steep slope up to Cetate. Here, the entrance cost 7 lei.
And what rhymes with the Neamt Fortress? Obviously, Neamţ Monastery, this time a monk, which also has a museum to visit.
The present church is founded by Stephen the Great at the end of the sec. The XV century instead of the one built by Peter Musat and affected by the earthquake of 1471. The monastery has the largest and oldest monastery library (over 19 million volumes). In fact, this is also the museum (mostly), about the prints used several centuries ago to print books.
Entry costs 5 lei.
If we are here, in the village of Vânători Neamţ there is the Zimbri Reserve established in 1968, with 3 bumps brought from Poland named Roxana, Rarău and Raluca, like me 🙃.
The reserve also includes carpathian deer, deer, ravens, foxes, bumps, rabbits, bears, wolves and avifauna species. Entry costs 5 lei, but it does all the money (ahaha), seriously, I liked it a lot here.
In fact, our final destination (yes, like the movie) was Red Lake, from which, it turned out, there was little memory. It may be that my childhood was not so visited, but now it was too crowded. I have nothing with the people, but it was more beautiful without some of them. Plus the cars that filled the parking lot and stood on the narrow side of the road.
The road up there, by the way, is spectacular, especially when you stand on the right of the driver, with many steep slopes.
The lake is a natural dam formed by the earthquake of magnitude 6.9 of 1838.
Several restaurants are built on the shore of the lake and I saw that it is also an option for weddings. On the lake, boat trips can be made, and there are some mountain trails near the lake.
Okay, if they were still on the way, we went to Agapia and Varatec, monasteries of both nuns, and even Varatec is the largest of this kind in Romania. I do not go into details 🙃 but it was nice.
Route that led us to Lake Izvorul Muntelui (aka Lake Bicaz), built on the Bistrita River between 1950 and 1960.
It is the third highest dam in the country (127m), and in the year it was completed it was the fourth highest in Europe. For its construction, over 15,000 people, among which political detainees, over 18,000 people, entire villages and cemeteries were moved, and the church of Răpciuni was relocated to the Village Museum in Bucharest.
This holiday lasted 5 days. It was the most beautiful vacation I've ever had.
I hope you like it too.