Our wonderful holiday in Romania and Bulgaria - Aug, 2007

We just returned from a wonderful trip to S/E-Europe. We had only read about the beauties of Romania and Bulgaria but what we encountered during this trip was beyond our wildest expectations. We landed in Bucharest and travel throughout Romania, starting with Bucharest. We visited Transylvania with all it's medieval castles and fortifications (including the Dracula Caslte in Bran - which we sadly discovered was actually not related to Dracula at all....). The northern part of Romania is the most picturesque one. Traditional villages with people still traveling by horse, unique churches and monasteries (some of them even UNESCO listed). The exterior frescoes of the painted monasteries in Bukovina (or northern Moldova) were literally breathtaking. The Romanian and Bulgarian Black Sea coast region is certainly a holiday destination itself. My wife fell in love with it's soft beaches. We visited the Aladjah monastery with it's cells carved in the steep rock. Also interesting was the island of Nessebar with it's traditional architecture. (I think all houses there are either souvenir shops or restaurants). We just hope we would have had more time to enjoy this places some more. For everything we have to thank our wonderful guide Serban Capatana (serban@welcome2romania.ro) who accompanied us throughout this trip and made all necessary arrangements.