Day 22 - Tuesday 16th June

Breakfast was in the gazebo at 8am and we checked out of the guest house after 9am.

The first stop was to visit the house of a wood carver called Teo Barsan. He turned out to be a very entertaining character. I'm sure he'd be a great salesman. It was certainly fun to visit his place.

He took us inside to see the timber products he was working on and then out to his work shed. The work shed had a mixture of traditional tools and modern power tools. In the yard we saw lots of timber logs that were waiting to be fashioned into something more beautiful.

The next stop was to be the Museum of the Romanian Peasant Woman in Dragomiresti but unfortunately it was closed when we got there.

On the way to the next destination, we passed a market. It looked like the same market we'd seen yesterday except that it had moved to another village. Along the way we passed by the City of Bistrita but didn't stop.

We were heading east to The Oriental Carpathian Mountains from Transylvania to Moldova. We stopped for a coffee break at the top of a hill that had great views of the valleys, farmlands and villages in the distance.

It had started to rain by the time we stopped for lunch as the Dracula Hotel and Castle which was built for tourists in 70s by the communist regime. I had a pork roll (pretty average) and an Ursus Premium beer.

After the lunch, Alex organised for us to do a tour of the Dracula room. A guide took us down to the room via narrow stonework passageways using just a single torch to light the way. In the room she explained some of the stories about Dracula. When she opened the coffin in the middle of the room to show us his remains, a man lept out of the coffin. He had successfully managed to surprise us.

Outside the hotel, there was a statue of Bram Stoker, the Irish author who wrote the books about Dracula.

It was still raining when we got to our next destination - a group of decorated (painted) houses on a side road in the countryside. I was the only one silly enough to get out of the car in the rain because I wanted to take photos of the houses.

Next we stopped at the Museum for the Art of Wood. Over several levels and numerous rooms, it displayed a wide variety of timber products including furniture, weapons, statues, carvings, farming implements, spinning wheels and other artifacts.

At the end of the tour, they also had a display of painted eggs. Suzy bought a few.

The weather was improving by the time we reached Casa Humor in the town of Humorului which is located on the Humor River. Our room was on the second floor of a three-storey building near the rear of the property which gave us a nice view of the town and the pastures on either side.

There was no lift and Alex carried our big bags up the stairs to our room. It was a nice room with two single beds pushed together each with its own doona. There was no air conditioning.

We had dinner in the hotel's restaurant where we ordered a 1L carafe of the house red.