Outside Chisinau

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So, Chisinau. Mostly sounds like kiz-ee-now. Usually rhymes with kiss-me-now. Sometimes with chiz-me-nev. I think no 2 people pronounce it alike depending on their native language or dialect. In the end though, all the advice we got was 2 days was too long to spend in the city and that the beauty of Moldova lay in the countryside. So, we booked a 2-day overnight tour which you may recall was cancelled on us by the tour operator a couple of weeks ago. We were able to keep our room tonight at City Park Hotel, which left us with filling the 2 days. Today we booked a 1-day tour that visited the area we had originally booked for 2 days. It was a Private Tour to Old Orhei and Curchi Monastery. The tour description is full day with dinner. It was actually 5 hours with lunch. That was fine. We were a little surprised that our guide today brought her mother along to practice her English, navigate and order/organize our lunch while we toured. It was fine. She was also a tour guide in Russian and Turkish and went out of her way to be helpful. We didn't find the countryside to be as impressive as Romania's. The Old Orhei valley area was quite scenic but that was really the highlight.  The Curchi Monastery was beautifully landscaped but as Natalia pointed out, it is very rich and had recently been spruced for a visit from the Orthodox Patriach. It seemed like a good substitute for our cancelled tour. The lunch was beautifully presented outdoors by the chickens and roosters. It was way too much food and an early lunch. We'd given up by 12:30 pm. The guide explained they wanted us to be able to try a wide variety of local dishes. We'd had something like almost all of it and of course this was fresher and home made so somehow different and maybe better. We had a red wine in an earthenware pitcher that Clay said wasn't as bad as the Friia family red but bad. We asked for a white too and got a sweet sparkling bottle that was very nice. It was the first wine I'd had in months and I couldn't handle more than a half glass. We both drank all the 1/3 liter bottle of water they provided. In the end, the 5-hours was fine. We got back and toured locally on our own for an hour or so per Natalia's advice. We walked through Cathedral Park and the cathedral at the up hill end of our pedestrian street. Then we took well-earned and long awaited naps. We got up and went back to Placinte for dinner. We had chicken, cheese placinte and cherry placinte tonight. It was slightly less oniony tonight. We need to find somewhere new for tomorrow.

At 10 am tomorrow we start a new tour. It is a combo city tour with a country side winery added. More later.

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