Tuesday: Monuments, Monasteries, Waterfalls, and Dracula

Tuesday I was lucky enough to accompany about 50 students and 2 professors to a fieldtrip to some pretty cool locations. This is the route we took:

Our first stop was Moisei, a little village just over the county border in Maramures. There we visited the monastery that was founded in the early 1600’s and I got to see one of the ever so famous wooden churches of Maramures. After we left the Monastery, we headed over to the WWII monument where we learned about the massacre that occurred on October 14th, 1944 where 44 people were killed by the Hungarian Army. The next leg of our trip was to Borsa, home of the Cascada Cailor. We took a ski lift up to the top of the mountain where the view was absolutely phenomenal. After about a 30 minute hike, we arrived at the waterfall only to find it completely frozen. The hike and trip was still worth it because the views were absolutely amazing and from that mountain I could see into my county and Ukraine as well. Around 2pm, we continued on our way and we made a quick pit stop where the counties of Maramures,Bistrita, and Suceava meet. There is a little monastery there as well and after a 20 minute snowball fight, got back on the road. After a 2 hour drive, we stopped in Vatra Dornei to grab a bite to eat and we were off again to our last stop for the day, the ever famous Dracula Castle. There are many various hotels and castles that claim to be the real deal and, although some of them are (the ones that belonged to Vlad the Impaler), this specific one was made famous by Bram Stoker. It was about this specific hotel located in the Tihuta Pass (Borgo Pass), that the author wrote about. I’m not gonna lie. I was fairly disappointed with the hotel since they have done an awful job trying to feed off of the “Dracula” hype but i’m happy I can check it off my list.