Romania 2

I'm writing this from the airport at Dubai. No, we're not heading anywhere exotic - we're going home! As many of you know, we have been fighting a number of wind farm battles for years. We won our recent legal battle, but the Planning Minister has retaliated by fast-tracking the planning panel hearing we are involved in. The first hearing is next week and the main hearing begins a few weeks after that. We have to go home as quickly as possible. Fortunately, we were able to finish the trip with the kids and are heading home at roughly the same time as them.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom - back to the fun stuff!

We headed to the tiny town of Viscri. This was settled by the Saxons who have their own unique style of housing. Most Saxons left to return to Germany about 20 or 30 years ago and there are many abandoned villages.

Viscri wasn't as interesting as we thought it might be but the place we stayed in was great!

Our room was upstairs and the kids' room was downstairs.

Maddy and Connor slept in a traditional Saxon where the bottom bed is in a large pull-out drawer!

Maddy and Alanna trying on the errrr interesting local hats!

The girls bravely knocked back a Palinca - the local plum brandy - at dinner.

"Mmmmm, delicious," they said!!!!

We headed off to see the local fortified church. There are only 25 fortified churches in Europe and they're all in the Saxon lands in Romania. If nasty people are going to attack you and the strongest building is the church, it makes sense to fortify that.

We had a great time exploring this place. We found the secret staircase that led to the top and there were only a few people there. Courtney wasn't well enough to join us but we waited for her the next morning while she saw it then.

There were always interesting things on the rural roads - loose horses, gypsy families and hay being carted home

Next stop was Biertan for another fortified church. It was in great condition, and this arched walkway was lovely, but it wasn't as much fun as the Viscri one.

We then moved onto Sibiu, a large town where we thought the kids could find a bit of fun on the weekend. Again, we had great rooms. John's and mine was right on the main square.

The view from our window. Yep - it rained a lot here but mostly in the evenings.

Many houses here have unique dormer windows that look like eyes.

There are some awesome churches in Romania.

One night we hit the town. We found some great bars. We eventually left the girls to do their own thing and Maddy and Alanna had a HUGE night! The next day it was time for Maddy to leave us as she was heading off on her own European adventure. Looking slightly worse for wear (damn - I didn't get a photo!) we put her on a bus and said goodbye. It had been a fun time!

Heather