Pastoral beautiful.
More fancy tin work
Above the Dnister River, heading to the Tipova cave monastery.
The Tipova Cave Monastery, dating back to the 10th and 12th century. Carved into limestone cliffs high above the river. Impressive.
Here's a 360 video of the caves and the river with Transdniestr, an autonomous, pro-Soviet region in Moldova between the Dniestr and the Ukraine.
There are bus stops like these all over Moldova, many with beautiful tile mosaics and paintings.
Soroca! A medieval town in northern Moldova, known for this fortress.
Along the Dneistr in Soroca. One can reach the Ukraine from here by a simple car ferry (click to enlarge).
We received these local flowers from an older woman that we gave a ride to into town. In Moldova, personal cars function as taxis--people walk from their small village to the main road, and wave you down; if you have room, it's up to you whether you want to stop. We later learned that it is customary to be paid for this service; for us, it was a way to meet people and give back some of the generosity that we'd received.
The Hotel Centro, found by conveniently located signs.
The town was pretty quiet in the offseason. We had a hard time finding a place to eat with the few restaurants we found hosting weddings that Sunday evening. We stumbled upon a hotel bar and asked if they served meals. And met our second Moldovan woman who worked in Italy. She asked if there was anything we didn't eat, and prepared for us a wonderful schnitzel, fried potatoes, and dilly salad.
We found this little gogosi (donut) shop around the corner from our hotel.
We waited until 9:15am until the oil was hot and enjoyed fresh gogosi with a dusting a sugar.
In Soroca, we had another friendly encounter with a Moldovani in the grocery store. He overheard us discussing which yogurt to buy and introduced himself--he was a retired English teacher and relished opportunities to practice. He gave us directions to the Jewish cemetery up on the hill above town. It was a large cemetery with both large, recent gravestones (many of which had porcelain enamel photographs) and older stones that were no longer legible. We wandered around , looking at pictures and names; to find a Matzevahman would have been unbelievable, we were really there to pay our respects.
In Soroca, we had another friendly encounter with a Moldovani in the grocery store. He overheard us discussing which yogurt to buy and introduced himself--he was a retired English teacher and relished opportunities to practice. He gave us directions to the Jewish cemetery up on the hill above town. It was a large cemetery with both large, recent gravestones (many of which had porcelain enamel photographs) and older stones that were no longer legible. We wandered around , looking at pictures and names; to find a Matzevahman would have been unbelievable, we were really there to pay our respects.
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