Eastern Europe

We had teary goodbye with our host at Lacu Rosu. We left early to do a scenic drive of the Bicaz Gorge and to visit Agapia Nunnery, the second largest nunnery in Romania. It was huge. We soon realized that the little houses around the main church and nunnery buildings were also for the nuns. It's like a nun village. There were nuns everywhere. They were walking, or standing and talking in most streets. We did not want to drive where there were many nuns, so we ended up parking at a minor side entrance. We now don't think that's where we were supposed to enter from but it gave us the opportunity to walk around the nun village trying to find where visitors were supposed to be. The nuns just looked at us indulgently and carried on with their nun business. We finally found the main church and a service was in progress. Three nuns were singing beautifully so we stood at the back to listen. There was a table laden with piles of breads, buns, cake, beverages in bottles, and painted eggs. Halfway through the service the priest walked up to a singing nun and whispered something to her. Shortly after, she came to us and told us, in English, to walk around the church for a look and not to just stand there. She pointed to the front of the church and asked us to go forward. We moved a few steps forward but were very uncomfortable standing between the priest and the altar when the rest of the nuns and the public was standing behind him. We stood for a minute or so and quietly made our way back to stand behind the priest again. Whilst the priest was chanting and the nuns singing in harmony, they gathered around the table of food while the priest blessed the food with holy water and the nuns together lifted the table and shook it ever so gently. Not a bottle moved, not a jingle of bottles, or sound was heard except for the beautiful singing. I could not help thinking what would happen to the piles of food and tall slender bottles if I had to perform that same task. To our surprise after the service the same nun kept presenting us with a handfuls of breads, kozana and painted eggs for us to take away with us. There was so much she had to give us a plastic bag to carry it all in. It all smelt lovely but we couldn't eat any because we were going to PUNCT gastronomic lunch.

Lunch was 4 courses, and each course would have been a more than adequate lunch in itself. We were given more dessert to take away with us. The hostess/ cook and her daughter-in-law ate the main course with us. The daughter-in-law was asked to come this afternoon to help explain and translate as the hostess did not speak any English. It was lovely learning that every single thing we ate, every ingredient came from either their farm, their family's farm, or a friend's farm. The village have a collective mentality of sharing their produce with each other. Even the white polenta was grown at "friend's farm". Needless to say, it was all most delicious. We had a "boy chicken" for mains. The whole boy chicken meat was dark, even the breast. It was just boiled with "bit salt" and was most tasty.

We stopped at the side of the road to buy some apples. Grace got down as it was too cold for Ruby. As Grace got into the car the apple lady presented Ruby with two huge apples. She must have thought that Grace was not going to share her apples and didn't want to Ruby to go without.

Ironically, or my friend Murphy struck again, as this is the only part of the holiday that we do not need provisions.

We managed to see our first UNESCO listed painted monastery, Voronet Monastery, before arriving at our accommodation at Forest Green Spa Resort in Gura Humorului. We checked in quickly and were relaxing at the steam room, the dry sauna, the salt tub, and the swimming pool for the last three hours. Actually I don't know if the salt tub was very relaxing. It must be much saltier than the last spa we went to and it was truely impossible to stay seated. We now know what zero gravity feels like. I gave up trying to sit as one should in a spa tub and used it as a flotation tub. I thought flotation tubs are supposed to be relaxing so that's what I did. Laid in my back and floated. However the jets kept tossingly me around like a cork in a storm and we ended up in fits of giggles. Fortunately no one else was around.
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