It's not often we talk about politics...

But I felt it was important to give some background on the area that we are now visiting.

We're now in the country of Transnistria. Officially called the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The problem is that this country doesn't really exist.

Oh, it's a country. It has its own border, its own border guards, its own passports, its own government, its own parliament, its own currency, and its own military.  Yes, it's a country.

The best wine in Moldova!

Yesterday, we drove about two hours south of the capital of Chisinau to the little town of Purcari, located on the Moldova - Ukraine border. There, we found the Purcari Winery.

Of course Moldova is famous for it's fine wines. When I began doing research about our trip to Moldova, the name Purcari kept coming up, and so it was one of the places that we really wanted to visit. Purcari is just a small vineyard...but they have a big history!

The largest wine cellar in the world

The other day we visited the underground wine cellars at Cricova Winery. They are listed as the second largest wine cellar in the world. Yesterday, we visited the largest wine cellar in the world!

Yes, the tiny, unknown country of Moldova has the two largest wine cellars in the world.

The one we visited yesterday at Milestii Mici Winery contains over 2 million bottles of wine.

November Expenses

I was going to wait and publish our expenses for the entire trip. And when we're finished maybe I'll do that anyhow, because it would be a good exercise to show how much we spend per day on a six week journey. But for now, here's where we stood for the month of November...

We started off the month of November in the city of Ottawa, and so I've included our travel expenses for the one way journey to get to Europe. Despite the fact that we actually paid for the tickets last June, they're being expensed in the month we use them to make it a more accurate representation of how much we spend.

Walking tour of downtown Chisinau, Moldova

We walked over to pick up our car rental yesterday morning. It's been pure luck that every time we've booked a car rental on this trip, the office has been really close to where we're staying. This time, it was only a fifteen minute walk.

They gave us a little Ford Fiesta for 18 euros per day. We're keeping the car for nine days. This place accepts credit cards, but when I went to pay they said it would cost 3% extra to use the card. Okay, whatever. Not a big deal. I wanted to use the card because I have total rental vehicle coverage through our Visa card. So, it cost an extra $7 or so for that. Oh, and an extra 20 euros for the paperwork to be able to take the car to Transnistria.

We're all on the same page...

We relaxed for the morning and did some laundry. Just before the noon hour, we hopped on the local bus and headed downtown to meet our AirBnb host Gloria. She wanted to see the refurbished Moldova National Museum of Art, and asked if we wanted to go with her. Sure!

The museum had been closed for twenty years because the building itself was in such sad shape. It officially reopened November 4th of this year.

The underground wine city of Cricova

Moldova is not a well known country, especially in North America. But if anybody knows it, they know it for it's wines. The tiny country (1/10th the size of California) produces about 66 million liters of wine per year.

There are about 45 commercial wineries in Moldova, and 10 of them are open to public tours. In no particular order, we plan to visit three of them during our time here. Yesterday, we visited the second largest wine cellar in the world, at the Cricova underground wine city!

The Orheiul Vechi Cave Monastery in Moldova

For our first full day in Moldova, we had been trying to get in to see one of the two largest wine cellars in the world. Both, are located right here in tiny Moldova! But, you need a reservation, and they were all booked up so there was nothing available for the last minute. We made reservation for 11:00am this morning, so you'll hear about that in tomorrow's blog post.

Instead, we went with our friend Andrei to the Orheiul Vechi Historical Sitenear the village of Trebujeni.

Travel Day - Iasi to Chisinau, Moldova

Well, we are now in the Republic of Moldova...the least visited country in Europe!

We are staying in Moldova for 10 to 14 days, first basing ourselves in the capitol city of Chișinău (pronounced Kish-i-now) (pop 650,000). We have a car rental booked for a week starting Saturday so that we can do some day trips. And after our week in the capital, we will stay somewhere else in Moldova.

Road trip to the painted monasteries of northern Romania

One of the things Ruth had on her Romania bucket list was to see the UNESCO listed painted monasteries of the Moldavian region of Romania.

We were running out of time, and it didn't look like it was going to be easy to do. But that's one of the reasons we made a quick two day stop here in Iasi. And, it's the reason we rented a car here.

We set off on a road trip at around 8:00am yesterday morning.

Another shady car rental deal

We arrived in Iasi (pronouced Ee-ash) early yesterday morning and didn't waste any time. We only had the one day to see the city itself, so even though we were a bit tired from our overnight train journey we headed out as soon as we got things settled.

And, we had organized a car rental for our time here. We didn't really need it for yesterday, but we wanted to do a long day trip today so by picking it up yesterday we could get an early start today.

A moment of panic...

Well, it was an interesting 24 hours, just as I figured it might be! But, we are now here in the city of Iași (pop 316,000) at the far eastern edge of Romania. We are only about 25 kms (15 miles) from the border of The Republic of Moldova. And we are at our AirBnb guesthouse...just as planned.

But it almost didn't happen that way. And there was the odd moment of panic.

It's going to be an interesting 24 hours...

Yesterday was a relaxing day, just like we planned.

It's tough when you're visiting a new country and you don't want to waste any time. There's too much to see and do and we don't want to miss any of it. But, we've learned that you need to take some down time. Yesterday's weather wasn't the nicest, so we took our time in the morning, got caught up on some computer things, and after lunch I had nap.

Another birthday, another country...

Happy 55th to my beautiful wife Ruth today as we once again celebrate her birthday in a new country. Last year we were in Colombia. We don't expect this trend to end anytime soon, so I wonder where we'll be for next year's birthday?!

We learned a couple of years ago that birthdays are not going to be travel days. Birthdays are relax days. Plus, it's raining today and we've pretty much exhausted the immediate area of things to see and do.

We are, however, going out for dinner!

Arsenal Park and a 2,000 year old ruins site

Interesting day yesterday as we first went to a Soviet military theme park, and then up into the mountains to the remains of a Dacian settlement from 2,000 years ago.

Had to put fuel in the car for the first time. This car is a diesel, and the onboard trip computer said that we were averaging 4.2 l/100 kms. That's 56 mpg! Wow! We had already driven over 800 kms (500 miles) and still had a quarter tank. It cost 150 lei ($49.50 CAD, $36 USD) to fill it up.