Back on the road--Romania and Bulgaria

                                            Orthodox cathdral in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

It has been almost 2 years since my last travel blog, so it felt really good to be sitting in the Frankfurt airport waiting for our flight to Cluj-Napoca, Romania, getting ready to write about our travels in this turbulent and beautiful part of the world.

Like all of our other trips in the terrible time of Covid, we've postponed our planning trip to Romania and Bulgaria twice.  But, last night, we arrived in the western Romanian city of Cluj, the second largest city in the country, with about 400,000 people, feeling very fortunate to be on the road again.  

The city, as all of Romania, suffers from Communist concrete architecture, but its center is a gem of beautiful baroque buildings from its time as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In recent years, many of these buildings have been restored.

                                            Loggia in the Alba Iulia citadel

Though it was part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, Romania's population is 83% Romanian  Orthodox, reflected in the many stately churches filling its cities and countryside, some restored, some with restoration in the works, and some crumbling.  The churches and cathedrals have the Romanian variation of the onion-shaped steeples found on many Orthodox churches.  These have a wide base tapering to a slender top.

cathedral inside citadel at Alba Iulia

    Today, we drove from Cluj to Alba Iulia, one of the     oldest towns in Romania, to see its citadel.  Once a     huge fortress, today its beautiful Orthodox                   cathedral inside the Citadel has been restored,             along with more baroque churches and museums        (closed for Covid) contained within the Citadel.  A      terrace overlooks the valley and mountains                  beyond.  It must have been a resplendent place in        its time of glory.

    Alba Iulia was Roman at one time, a town on a            main Roman road.  There are a couple of small            excavations on the site showing walls from the            Roman period.

South of Alba Iulia, Corvin Castle is yet another massive fortress, altered many times to make it something it wasn't originally, from a palace for one of the Romanian kings to a weapons depot and now back to a fortress/palace under restoration.

  

Corvin Castle, Humedoara, Romania

Tonight we are in Sibiu, a medieval town in the rolling hills of farmland and villages of Transylvania.  More on Sibiu tomorrow.