Saturday, November 17th, 2007
We got off the plane, knowing that we needed to catch the 65 bus into town. We found out that it only costs 1 leu/per person, so Katie only got out 100 leu from the ATM. We soon realized the exchange rate was 1 $US= 11.5 leu… so we only took about $8.70 out of the ATM. Zoinks….
In the past three cities, we have been able to use “In your Pocket” guides, which have been incredibly helpful and accurate. Unfortunately, “In your Pocket” hasn’t made its way to Moldova, and there wasn’t much tourist information available. We were able to get one map from the tourist information, and they recommended catching the ‘165’ maxibus into Chisinau.
We loaded our bags into the spacious maxibus, paid our 2/leu per person, and we were on our way to downtown Chisinau. Before we knew it, the maxibus was stopping randomly on the side of the street to pick up more passengers….and we became the obnoxious foreigners with big bags taking up seats for passengers. What a way to start our new country….
Since we didn’t know much about Chisinau, we used the ‘we’ll get off the bus when most of the other people get off the bus’ technique. We just happened to get off near the bus station, which was coincidentally the correct stop. However, since we had not previously booked our accommodation, any stop could have worked!
After much debate and ‘shopping around,’ and a 9 cent tab at the Internet café, we were happy to have successfully found accommodation at the Stella de Lux hotel. We never heard back from our ‘apartment rental’ as we realized that tourism is a ‘new’ thing for Moldovian people, and prompt replies were not customary.
After almost breaking our hotel door, due to the necessary ‘hip swing’ needed to get the door at the perfect angle to lock and unlock the door…. We found the receptionist nearly yelling in broken English “just slide the key under the door!”… and us yelling back “it won’t come out of the door!”… it was rather hilarious, and they gave us a lesson on opening and closing their ‘newly remodeled’ locks. Oye…
We headed to something familiar…. The Irish Pub for dinner and football watching which was conveniently only 1 block from the hotel. For the record, Ireland tied Wales, but then later lost…in overtime.
The next morning, the receptionist who showed us how to open a door… served us our complimentary breakfast, which we barely touched. Needless to say, we won’t be returning to the ‘free’ breakfast on our next two mornings…. We decided to hit the town and explore the museums and parks.
Our first stop was the “Holy Gates” or better known as Chisinau’s Arc de Triomphe which was situated in between Cathedral Park and Stephan Cel Mare Public Garden. We then walked along the 24 hour flower market selling many varieties of flowers and table settings. We decided to stop for lunch at BeerMania, as we accidentally confused it with the BeerHouse which had good food reviews in our guide… Regardless, our 3 hours lunch was pretty tasty, yet we had to stalk the server for our check.
After lunch, we decided that we needed a laugh and some exercise, so we decided to walk to the Circus Show/Museum to buy tickets for the 6:30pm Sunday show. After walking over a mile in below zero weather, we stumbled on a huge arena with clowns on its façade. We soon noticed plywood boarding on most of the windows, and we realized that the circus was no longer in town. We later found out from locals that the circus has not been running for the last 8 years and building was in need of serious renovation…
Sad… and without any elephant rides, we took the trolley back towards the University to check out the Chisinau History Museum, housed in the old water tower. To our dismay, the water tower was also closed and did not look like it was….ever open.
Well after two closures from our Lonely Planet Guide book, we figured to try and explore more of the parks and lakes in the city, and we headed out for “Lacul Valea Morilor” or Lake Valea. And to make the third time a charm…. The lake was completely dried up.
Attempting to understand the pain of the previous soviet occupation and disappointment, we left the dried up lake slightly depressed. We ended up walking up through a neighborhood which was a mysterious patchwork of extravagant houses and rundown shanties. Once to the top of the street, we stumbled on a wedding celebration just down the street from our hotel. Later that night, we also had the pleasure of hearing the cars leaving the celebration… as they constantly honk the horn, while driving in celebration. To end our day of ’sightseeing,’ we ended up finding a dinner recommendation that was open (wahoo!) and enjoyed our strong dollar conversion to the Moldovian Leu at the Cactus Café.
On Monday, we successfully made our way out to Cricova Wine country with a driver from our hotel. We had an hour tour of the underground caves with Natalie our English speaking tour guide. We learned that 70% of their wine is sparkling and they produce white, rose and red sparkling wines, using the old French manual second fermentation process. We also got to tour their 1.3 million bottles of wine in their ‘cellar.’ They are incredibly proud of their worldwide collection…. Of wine going bad.
After the wine tour, we had the driver drop us at the US Embassy for additional passport pages. We had the pleasure of meeting the US Moldavian Consulate and getting one of the only free government perks left… additional passport pages. On our walk home we found the silver lining of Moldova… a chocolate shop on the corner and grocery store to get snacks for our journey to Turkey tomorrow. We ended our Moldavian trip at a classic folk restaurant, Orasul Vechi. We had two local dishes, enjoyed folk music and toasted to our last night.
We took at 85 leu ($7.40 sooo cheap!! ), 30 minute taxi ride to the airport and caught our flight to meet Jeanne in Istanbul!