DAY 1: 30th September, Wednesday:

Arriving by plain to Romania (Suceava airport). Meet your driver and guide for your Romanian holiday.

Transfer (about 1 hour) to a remote village, Poieni Solca, where we will stay with a dear couple and friends, Angelica and Simion, for the next 3 nights. We will use their accommodation as a base in the area, while we depart every day for walks and visits.

DAY 2: 1st October, Thursday

Start from home, with a visit to the shepherd, than continue towards painted churches of Humor and Voronet.
From one of the Polish villages, we will start a walk through the forest.

After the walk we visit Humor and later, Voronet. VORONET is also known as the Sistine Chapel of the East. Perhaps the most stunning of the painted monasteries, it was founded in 1487 by Stephen the Great to celebrate a victory over the Turks. The frescoes were added about 60 years later and feature an intense blue…even after more than 500 years!
Return to your accommodation, in time for dinner.

DAY 3, 2^nd of October, Friday:

10.00 Take the steam train from Moldovita to Argel, a former forestry line, now rebuild for tourist attraction. The line goes for about 12 kms up the valley from Moldovita alongside the valley road in the fashion of the former Irish narrow gauge lines. It is one of the prettiest lines, as it goes through the villages and you see people weaving and smiling when the steam train goes by.

I advise you to run the line to its end (Argel) and back another half. From here, we will stop the train and start walking back to the station, via the hills (with impressive views and passing small, traditional wooden houses).

Today, we also visit the near by painted church, Moldovita. MOLDOVITA’s exterior walls feature predominantly gold and deep blue paintings, dating from 1537. The large and vivid Siege of Constantinople highlights the frescoes. There is also a beautiful fortified wall and garden and the museum displays the “Golden Apple”, a prize received by the painted churches in 1977 for the “best travel destination”.

Return to your accommodation, in time for dinner.

DAY 4: 3rd of October, Saturday:

Visit Sucevita painted church in the morning, before leaving Bucovina to head to Maramures. We drive over the Carpathians to change the region, crossing over one of the highest passes in Romania. A sequence of passes today, before we reach the accommodation.

Maramures is a region up north Romania, surrounded by mountains and with picturesque meadows and valleys, where people still wear their traditional clothes everyday. The region is also famous for the small timber houses, with huge wooden entrance gates and for the wooden churches competing to reach the sky.
“THE MARAMURES is a land cut off by mountains to the south and, since 1945, by the border with what was the Soviet Union to the north. Still today there is something distinctly sylvan about the Maramureseni, especially when one sees them huddled together in their wooden churches praying to God to help them eke out a living, with their mostly wooden tools, from their small patches of ground encircled by the enchoing forest. In valleys surrounded by forests and mountains, with no towns of any size nearby, remote and poorly connected to the outside world, the Maramures remained one of the most unaltered regions of Europe” (WILLIAM BLACKER, Along the Enchanted Way)

DAY 5:4th of October, Sunday:

Being a Sunday, it will be good to see some Sunday best. People still dress up for church and we can walk to Breb to see people leaving the church. Explore the village and walk to Desesti (over two hours) to visit it’s Unesco heritage wooden church.

In the after noon, visit Sighetu Maramatiei and it’s museums.

DAY 6: 5th of October, Monday:

Explore other Maramures valleys, visit a weekly Monday market and walk over the hills from Botiza to Ieud. Ieud has a beautiful wooden church, Unesco heritage.

Day 7: 6th October, Tuesday:

Transfer for the flight to Baia Mare (only to Bucharest) or Cluj Napoca (over 3 hours trasnfer to Cluj Napoca).