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A Daughter’s Tribute to her Father: Our Heritage Trip to Romania

Exactly one year ago my brother, my father, and I traveled to Romania. Our journey was in honor of my father’s 80th birthday, and coincided with the 100th anniversary of the date his father left Romania to come to America.

It was my father’s third visit to the country. He and my mother had connected with his Romanian relatives and visited back in 1979, when Romania was still firmly under communism. In 2001 my brother Mark, his wife and their then-5-year-old daughter accompanied my father for a return visit.

I was not able to join the 2001 trip, and I knew I would have regrets if I never got a chance to go with Dad. Since I was sending my last child away to college and would be free to travel, I proposed to my father that we go. When Mark heard of the trip he jumped at the chance to join us. We have another brother and a sister who were not able to come.

As it turns out, the decision to take the trip was providential. The three of us had a fabulous time, seeing relatives and sightseeing. Unbeknown to all of us, my father was harboring a brain tumor. We returned on October 2, and exactly three months later he died. This was all a huge shock to us, but we were left with a sense of profound gratitude for the magical time that we had spent together for the 12 days of this trip.

As a gift to my father before his death, I prepared a book of our trip, using www.blurb.com. I incorporated my journal entries and many of our 3700 photos, and the resulting book was well over 200 pages long. I am in the middle of a re-edit of the book, which I intend to finish for our relatives by Christmas this year.

Although I had hoped to post a timely Fodor’s trip report upon our return, all of the events of the past year prevented me. My journal is long and detailed, and I’d hoped to make it more concise. I’m sure part of the reason I’ve delayed is because of the emotional intensity connected with the memories of this trip.

It’s now been one full year since we traveled, however, and I’ve decided that I will post an adaptation of my journal as a tribute to my father. At some point in the future I may post a shorter outline style report of lodgings, restaurants, and sites, and I’ll put the link here. For now, it will be the long form. I don’t know how many people will follow the journey with me, but I believe it will be healing for me to post it.

I will try to include a link to relevant photos with each installment.

noe847,

First off, I am so sorry for the loss of your father! But I look forward to your report and a link to your photos.

Tom

Thank you for posting this! I can fully understand why there's been a delay. I'm glad your father was able to return before he died. I'm looking forward to hearing more about Romania.

Thanks for posting. I'm so sorry your father passed away.

I'm hoping to visit Romania next year, as I've been learning the language for 3 years now, so will be very interested to hear about your journey.

noe847 - I am so glad you and your brother got to travel back to Romania with your father. I am sorry for your loss.

I intend to follow your journey and hope it brings you healing.

Sandy

noe847,

I'm so sorry to hear of the loss of your father and also so awed that your timing permitted such a wonderful trip with the ensuing memories.

I do hope that completing this tribute to your father will prove a gold mine of revived memories including some that had slipped away. And I also hope that it does prove a comfort and will be a healing process for you.

My best wishes for you. I'll be reading every word.

Thanks everyone, for the kind messages. hanl, that is very cool that you are learning Romanian. My 25 words got me only so far!

I'll start with some background info and then get on with the practicalities of the trip. The photos from the early part of the trip are not plentiful or very good in quality, but once we start exploring Transylvania there will be lots and lots more.

A bit of background

My grandfather Victor was born in a village in Transylvania where his father was pastor of a small Greco Catholic church. He had three brothers, two of whom became priests like their father (In the Greco Catholic Church, as in many Eastern churches under Rome, married men are able to become priests), and three younger sisters.

Victor trained as a tailor in Germany. He sewed dresses for his little sisters Cornelia, Aurelia and Victoria. In 1906, my grandfather decided to leave for America, in part to avoid the army and in part for a better life, and he insisted that a family photograph be taken before he departed. In the picture, all three girls are wearing the dresses that Victor made for them. As in every picture we have of him in the early 1900’s, Victor is proudly displaying his gold watch and fob. Copies of the picture were made for each of the original family members. Here is a link the “The Photo” as we all call it:
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8DZsmzZuzbnU

Victor began his voyage to America by traveling to Germany, where he arranged passage on a ship. Our Romanian relatives told us that he was robbed while in Germany and his traveling companion was killed. His father had to send him money - an equivalent amount to a half year's salary – before he could continue with his journey.

At the time of his departure, Romania was not an independent country. Victor always said that he was from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he spoke German. Over the course of his decades in America, Victor seemingly lost touch with his family.

It was not until he reached adulthood that my father learned that his heritage was Romanian. My aunt in California met someone who recognized their unusual surname and put her in touch with the ancestral village in Romania. As a result my grandfather was able to regain contact with his family late in his life. Interestingly, his older brother Leonte died the same day as Victor, around 70 years after they had last seen each other.

Thursday, September 21- Friday, September 22 
ATL to Bucharest via CDG (Hotel Rembrandt)

Saturday, September 23 
Bucharest to Fagaras via train (Hotel Montana – 2 nights)

Sunday, September 24 
family events in Fagaras and Dridif

Monday, September 25 
Fagaras to Sighisoara (Hotel Sighisoara)
meet guide,
driving route through Saxon Southern Transylvania:
-Cincsor
-Cincu
-Merghindeal
-Dealu Frumos
-Agnita
-Alma Vii
-Biertan

Tuesday, September 26 
Sighisoara to Maramures, sleep at Badu Izei (home stay)
-Bistrita
-Salistea de Sus
-Ieud
-Barsana

Wednesday, September 27
Maramures to Cluj-Napoca (Hotel Onix)
-Sapanta
-Sighet
-Surdesti

Thursday, September 28
Cluj-Napoca to Sibiu (Hotel Imparatul Romanilor)
-Alba Iulia
-Rasinari

Friday, September 29
Sibiu to Brasov (Aro Palace Hotel)
-Carta
-Rasnov
-Bran

Saturday, September 30
Brasov to Bucharest (Hotel Rembrandt – 2 nights)
-Prejmer
-Harman
leave guide in Bucharest

Sunday, October 1
Bucharest

Monday, October 2
Bucharest to ATL via CDG

non847 - enjoyed the picture. Nice to put a face to the name.

More please.

Sandy

I'm having trouble with the "preview my reply" function so I hope this doesn't double or triple post!

Preparation

In the opinion of some members of our family, we planned endlessly. We had lunch meetings and weekend meetings to discuss various aspects of the trip. And yet, there was always more to do. I didn’t get to read much about the background history of Romania until after I returned from the trip!

We split up responsibility for the major planning. My father kept busy connecting with relatives in Romania and planning two get-togethers: one in Transylvania, one in Bucharest. He also prepared useful pocket sized charts: of the family tree (so we would know who everybody was), temperature conversion, money conversion (new Romanian, old Romanian, US$ and Eur€), distance and weight conversions.

My brother did a lot of research on the particular destinations and Romanian craft items he was interesting in tracking down, researched camera film, and reprinted pictures from the trip 5 years ago (to give all the relatives when we saw them), researched books, including a cool book about the Saxon fortified churches that we got through inter-library loan. He also consulted with a friend from Romania with particular questions about the trip.

I bought the plane tickets, arranged lodging in Bucharest, found and coordinated with the driver/guide, helped with destination research (especially Maramures and the Saxon fortified churches), ordered the film, ordered the maps, researched and ordered the components for our international cell phone, and put together a book (shutterfly.com) with pictures of all of our family members that we could show to our relatives (this was a big hit), and, of course, logged onto Fodor’s for trip reports and to ask questions. My trip planning thread is:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34832950

The biggest glitch we faced: By the time we were 17 days away from leaving, all 3 of us had the wrong dates for the trip! I was on a 2 day drive back from taking my youngest daughter to college, and on the phone Mark convinced me that we were leaving on September 28 rather than the 21st, which is what I was remembering. I didn’t have my calendar or computer with me, so I got really confused. After I got home, I checked the plane tickets and was able to straighten everyone out. I don’t know how long my brother and father had been mistaken. Conflicting dates had been given to relatives, and my brother had requested the wrong vacation dates at work, but we got it all sorted.

I was concerned about the 105 minute connection at CDG, and having to go from 2E to 2B. The week of the trip we began tracking the on time record for the first flight. Seeing that it was typically arriving 45 to 60 minutes late, Mark suggested that we change our tickets to an earlier flight, which I did the day before our trip, giving us a 3 ½ hour connection and a little peace of mind.

I am trying to post some sections of this report, the ones with general travel information, in a color. Not being HTML adept, I cannot seem to get the color to preview although I am trying to follow the instructions exactly. So, if this posts with commands instead of showing the color, I apologize and will give up on the color idea.

A word about maps
Since we hired a guide to do the driving, we didn’t actually need a map for navigating our way around the country, but I do make extensive use of maps in planning (and like to follow along as a passenger.) We devised a very specific plan for our day of seeing Saxon churches in Southern Transylvania. I was also able to suggest/request a particular route for our drive up to Maramures, which worked out well.

We had a Romania road map, by Amco, at 1:850,000 scale, from the 2001 trip. I went online and ordered a street map of Bucharest and two different road maps of Transylvania. One of the Transylvania maps never arrived. We ended up with the Dimap-Szarvas map of Transylvania, which is a 1:400,000 scale. This map was amazing in the amount of detail – it showed all the villages and was topographical. I brought it to Kinko’s and enlarged specific sections (Southern Transylvania, Maramures) for more detailed planning (I was surprised to find that Maramures is actually a part of Transylvania). I was able to leave copies of the map, with our route highlighted, with the family members who remained at home.

When we met our guide, he provided us with a Huber-Niculescu map of Romania, which is a 1:600,000 scale, and much better than the Amco map. It is only in Romanian, but I don’t view that as a problem, since the road signs are in Romanian as well. The driver had a nice compact spiral book map of Romania with tons of detail. He offered to help me purchase one, but I forgot to follow up on that.

Packing

We each carried a 21” expandable rolling suitcase (which we put in checked baggage) and a small carry on bag. Inside the suitcases, we each had a spare folded duffel to fill and check for the return flight and a few empty tote bags so that we could divide our things when we got to the car portion of the trip. This system worked very well for us.

The gear we brought:

-Unlocked Motorola Razor quad band phone, with a United Mobile SIM card (a Liechtenstein cell number) and an account with callbackworld.com, which provided us with the ability to call home at 14¢/minute, and also gave us an 800 number that family members at home could use to reach our phone (also at 14¢/minute). Some of our family had good international phone plans and could call directly to our Liechtenstein cell number for around 10¢/minute. This all came in very handy when a financial/legal situation arose at home that took lots of our time on the phone each evening. BIG thanks to Fodorite xyz123 for the detailed cell phone help.

-Tape recorder and a few cassette tapes for interviewing relatives. We decided against bringing my old videocam, as it isn’t digital, and also decided not to purchase a digital videocam. Would have been nice to have, however.

-Canon Rebel 2000 SLR film camera, with 28-105 and 75-300 lenses, and 28 rolls of 36 exposure professional grade Kodak film (had to purchase more film on the trip – we used an additional 10 rolls of 36 exposures). I kept the film in a large lead bag and was very surprised that in all of the many security screenings the lead bag was never pulled out of my carry on bag for additional searching. I mean, for all they knew I could have had anything in there.

-We each brought point and shoot digital cameras, and enough memory cards that we could get by without downloading our photos.

We always had the film SLR camera and one digital camera going concurrently. Mark and I took turns with the film camera – it is so much fun to shoot with it.

I seriously thought about bringing my laptop computer but it is very big and heavy. We were able to rent a laptop at the Bucharest hotel, and we could use computers in the lobby at many of the other hotels to upload our photos.

A word about online photo/blog resources
For years we have used shutterfly.com for uploading our photos. We can share links to our photos, make very nice books and calendars of our photos, and we have been pleased with the quality and prices of prints. We were able to do an online photo share with friends and family while we were still on the road.

Mark loaded names and mailing addresses onto cardshop.com so that we could send postcards from the trip. The way it worked: we uploaded a travel picture from the hotel computer, wrote a greeting online, select the recipients, and cardshop made a postcard from our picture, with our greeting, mailed it from the US to our friends and relatives. We did this in the first half of the trip and the cards beat us home.

We also established an online travel blog with travelpod.com, hoping that we will have regular enough internet access to update it in real time. What I like the most about this site is the ability to draw the route on the map as we update from the different towns. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to experiment with things like how to embed the pictures in the text. We found that because we were so busy on this trip, moving nearly every day, and with irregular access to a computer/high speed connection, it was too hard to keep the travel blog updated in real time.

Thursday, September 21: We’re off

We all met in my driveway for the drive to the airport. Dad had nearly left his travel blazer on the bed with his passport/money in it, but turned back at the last minute and got it. We loaded the luggage in my car, took departure pictures, and closed it up. Mark turned to me and said, “Which car are we bringing to the airport?” “Um, the one with our luggage in it.”

At the airport, Mark won the weigh in – his suitcase was 32 pounds, mine and Dad’s were 35 pounds each. We all headed to the rest room – the same one. “Nancy, this is the men’s room.” Oops!

Friday, September 22: arrival in Bucharest

The transatlantic flight was fine, and we landed pretty much on time at concourse 2F. CDG was a zoo – when we got to 2B there was nowhere to sit until we were allowed to clear security and go to the gate. Plus, 2B smelled like a sewer. I stood in line at the duty-free shop to buy these little Toblerone bars. Turned out they were free samples! That good fortune was balanced out by the 8€ that I had to pay for three standard bottles of water. Ouch! No matter how much water was served on the plane – and I took it every time it was offered – I still was parched. The current security situation is so annoying. Waiting in all those long hot security lines without my own water bottle was murder.

The Air France flight from Paris-Bucharest was on an ancient 737. I was surprised that the flight attendants spoke French and English but not Romanian. We had a pretty bad scare on this leg. My father fainted just after take off, and it really looked like he had died. Eventually the flight attendants were able to revive him, cleared out a row on the plane, and he slept for three hours. Mark and I spent the flight trying to recover from our shock, and questioning the wisdom of taking a trip with an elderly parent! We realized that we would need to be doubly careful that Dad got enough rest. [The doctors told him later that this incident was not related to his brain tumor. He has always had issues of fainting, and actually carries spirits of ammonia with him but I didn’t really know that at the time. We made sure he carried those on board for the return flight, but had some trouble with the liquids rule because this was before the 3-1-1 rule.]

I loved the view out the window as we approached the Bucharest airport - all the little strips of farmland, each planted with something different. Romania has not done a lot of rationalizing of the farms, so many of the villages have retained the system of tiny individual parcels of land.

We were greeted at the airport by two very excited relatives and our first round of kisses on both cheeks. This is such an effective gesture of greeting/farewell. Being a woman, I also got a lot of kisses on the hand from our male relatives.

It was a grey day and the drive from the airport to the city center was also gray. There was tons of traffic on the road, and got our first introduction to Romanian driving. Lots of acceleration and braking, impatience and lane changing.

Bucharest was preparing for the Francophone summit that would be the upcoming Wednesday through Friday. The city was expecting many heads of state and was busy sprucing up and practicing for the event.

I enjoyed my view of the downtown as we made our way to the Hotel Rembrandt, a very small boutique hotel opened by Dutch investors in a renovated old building. It is on the edge of the pedestrian zone of the city, on a street that is traffic restricted. You have to tell the guard that you are going to the hotel, and he will open the gates. We were very pleased with the hotel and loved the location.

Most of the rooms are on 6 levels accessed by a small elevator. We had one business class room which was huge and had a nice view out the front of the hotel. The single room was small, but fine. The deluxe double was in a different part of the hotel and was one level up – with its own little flight of stairs and no elevator access. It was originally going to be for Dad, but I changed rooms with him so he didn’t have to do the walking. Each room had individually controlled air conditioning units. It was pretty warm in Bucharest that day, so we actually needed the a/c.

I was able to rent a laptop from the hotel for 10€/day, payable in cash. The hotel had a high speed connection, so we downloaded our first day’s photos and updated the online travel blog. While Dad napped, Mark and I walked around the corner and got cash at an ATM, and enjoyed our complimentary drink (orange juice for me, iced tea for him – what can I say, we’re boring) at the hotel bar, which is up a little spiral staircase on a mezzanine level they carved from the lobby. Then we had a brief nap before meeting two of our relatives, Silviu and his wife Ioanna, for dinner.

We walked to the City Grill, which was a great choice. It was quiet enough that we could talk, and provided a wonderful introduction to traditional Romanian food. The mămăligă (corn polenta with sour cream and cheese) was especially delicious.

A Word about Food:
We ate almost exclusively at restaurants that served traditional Romanian food. People kept stressing to us that the food was organic, but we weren’t sure if this was by design or necessity. We loved the soups; always generous servings and always ladled into our bowls from a separate serving bowl. Tripe soup was a menu standby, but I wasn’t adventuresome enough to try it. Brains were also common on the menu. A favorite dish was clatite, a crepe that could be savory (filled with chicken and mushrooms, for example) or sweet (filled with jam, chocolate, or ice cream.) We ordered the samale (stuffed cabbage) several times. We loved the country/peasant style potatoes, which were pan fried with pieces of bacon. We had excellent fish and also salads. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers were common, especially at breakfast. Romanian cheese is mostly of two types: brinza a soft cheese, and cap caval, a hard cheese. These are very salty, and we are told that is because of the traditional lack of refrigeration in Romania.

After dinner, Dad went back to the hotel to sleep, while Silviu and Ioanna took Mark and me on a driving mini tour of Bucharest at night. We saw the National Theatre, the Palace of Parliament (the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon), and some upscale hotels and shopping streets. We stopped at OMV, an Austrian gas station chain, and bought bottled water and snacks at the attached convenience store. We were excited to discover these chocolate wafer cookies called “Joe” – Dad’s name - so of course we had to stock up! Our relatives pointed out that the convenience store had an attached bar.

Picture link:
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8DZsmzZuzboo

What a wonderful, loving and beautiful experience. I have been in tears reading this. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Thanks, Lucy D and Sandybrit! The trip really was a ton of fun, although it certainly had its poignant moments.

Saturday, September 23: Bucharest to Făgăraş

Waking up to a light rain, we prepared to leave Bucharest. We were treated to a varied breakfast buffet at the Rembrandt: lox, hard boiled eggs, toast, cold cuts, cheeses, orange juice, coffee, cereals, yogurt, and fruit - served in the mezzanine bar of the hotel lobby. Silviu met us at 8:30am to drive us to the Gare de Nord train station. His chauffeur role was made considerably more difficult by the many closed roads we encountered. These were a result of weekend practice for the Francophone summit meeting to be held later in the week.

At the station, we had our first sighting of Romania's infamous stray dogs. This one was harmless, and we headed through the cold rain into the station.

We boarded the 9:38 train for Făgăraş, Transylvania. Our seats were in an ancient first class compartment. Three elderly Romanian men took the remaining seats. They were wearing suit jackets, ties, and sweaters and placed their hats carefully on the little hat shelves. During the ride, we had a conversation with the men in mixed English, German, French and Romanian. We talked a bit about Dad’s ancestors in Transylvania. Two of the men were Joe's age, 79, and one was 84 - Zaharie, a lawyer, Ilie, an engineer, and Nicolau, a farmer. They were from Sibiu, Transylvania, and all three were imprisoned for varying amounts of time in the 1940's to 1960's for anti Communist activities. Nicolau showed us how his fingers were smashed by his captors. The main channel of our communication was Zaharie to Nancy. Every time he wanted to get our attention to tell us something, he would say, "Nancy, please." These charming men were our introduction to the way the Romanian people are friendly to strangers.

Other highlights of the train trip:

- seeing the front page picture of Prince Charles in the Romanian newspaper. He is very involved in efforts to preserve traditional Romanian architecture and way of life, in the villages of Saxon Southern Transylvania and of Maramures. He has just purchased a house in Viscri which will become an inn.

- spotting out the train window our first Romanian haystack (kind of beehive shaped), our first horse and cart, and our first shepherd. Also our first vulcanizing shop.

a Word about Vulcanizing Shops
My father remembered from previous trips that every town and village had a “vulcanizare” shop that specialized in tire repairs. The conditions of the roads make these a necessity. I tried to capture these shops – and their signs – on camera. Some day I will return and make a special photo essay of these.

Low points of the train ride:

- the heat was on full blast and there was no way in our compartment to control it. When we mentioned to the conductor how hot it was, he merely nodded. Our compartment windows were locked, so we had to open the compartment door a breath of cool air. Unfortunately, all the people standing in the aisles ended up blocking the air from the windows out there that that did open.

-We didn’t get a very good view when we passed through the mountains because of the rain/mist.

Biggest surprise on the train:

- the number of people coming into our compartment seeking money. One man came in and set out several cheap trinkets on my seat. A few minutes later he returned to see which we wanted to purchase. Our haul - a deck of cards, a notebook and 3 pens - total of approximately $3. There were also beggars. One young woman knelt and kissed Nicolau's feet.

Făgăraş

After a 4 1/2 hour ride, we arrived on time at the Făgăraş train station, where our new friends helped us off the train with our luggage and bade us farewell with double kisses and handshakes. At the station we were met by two relatives, who grabbed our suitcases. We walked the 100 meters to the Hotel Montana, our home for the next two nights.

The Rough Guide assured us that the Hotel Montana is the best lodging in Făgăraş. If that’s true, then Fagaras is sorely in need of new accommodations. The room was relatively expensive by Romanian standards: about $45/night, not including breakfast. The hotel is some sort of adaptive reuse of a pre-existing building and the rooms have a very odd configuration. The rooms are plain, if not spartan. The walls and bare tile floors are a stark white. In my room + bath, there was exactly one electrical outlet, and it was hanging out of the wall by the wires. Plumbing pipes emerged from rough holes in the bathroom walls. My brother’s room had incorrect venting of the bathroom plumbing, resulting in sewer fumes in the room. In Dad’s room, he had to push two switches simultaneously to turn on the bathroom light. Apparently each switch connected to one wire to complete the circuit.

Temperatures in the hotel rooms were as cold as the train was hot. I cursed my last minute decision to remove the silk long underwear from my suitcase. My solution to the temperature problem was to sleep in socks and a sweater and use both duvets on my one twin bed. We were on the second floor (up two flights), and due to the slapdash construction we had to remind ourselves when we went up “watch your shoulder here” “watch your head here” and “watch the little step here.”

a Word about Staircases
We found that staircases in Romania commonly did not have risers of equal height. There was usually one step, often the top, which was tiny (about 3”). My brother, the architect, was heard to mutter, “Do the math, people.”

The afternoon and evening were occupied with relatives. We ate dinner at the Palace restaurant, where we enjoyed traditional food, including my favorite: white bean soup with smoked pork bone, and for dessert, papanasi, fried balls of dough. The 12 dinners on our tab totaled around $70. Relatives arrived at the restaurant by carloads as they reached town. We ended up pushing together a bunch of tables. They told us of an old Romanian saying “if you sit on the corner of the table you will never get married.” Everyone brought old photos, and we also showed around our Shutterfly photo book of our family in the US.

There was another big group eating in the restaurant: the wedding reception of Gary from Michigan, who had just gotten married to a Romanian woman from Făgăraş. He said he spoke no Romanian, so he was glad to chat with us about college football for a while (Mark is a Notre Dame grad, my father from Ohio State).

My brother had lots of fun sprinkling his Romanian phrases into conversations, and was been met with great amusement. He actually did quite well. I slowly began to learn a few words.

a Word about Language
I found English not as prevalent as I expected. It is fairly common in the younger generation, as English is now a required subject in the schools. Russian was taught in schools during the Communist years; between the two World Wars, French was the language usually taught. We found German was very common in Transylvania, which had a centuries long presence of ethnic Germans (although most of them left to return to Germany after the fall of communism). I ended up learning a couple dozen Romanian phrases, mostly of the greeting/pleasantry variety. The first phrase I used was “apa plata” – still water. I ended up speaking in German and French a good bit, especially when speaking with relatives. This sounds a lot grander than it was in reality; my German and French are very patchy. We were very happy to be with our guide/driver for 6 days, as he navigated our contacts with the Romanian vendors and shopkeepers, as well as with a few of our relatives. Most of the rest of the time, we were in the company of at least one relative who spoke English.

noe847 - Would you mind sharing the cost of the business class room at the Hotel Rembrandt - it looked very nice and so spacious.

You and your brother must surely have been terrified when your dad became ill on the final leg of your journey. I am so glad he was able to continue on and enjoy this return trip to his homeland.
He was very brave to take such a journey at his age.

Sandy

What a lot of work to get this posted. Thanks so much. I love the pictures intersperced. I have dialup (living in the country...) and couldn't get the slide show to work, but I could click on all the pics and enjoyed them.

SandyBrit, I will look up the hotel info and provide it here.

Yes, it was pretty awful on the plane - we'd just left Paris. I won't go into a lot of details, but my brother and I were convinced that Dad was gone. I don't ever think I've been so relieved as when I saw his fingers move - about an eternity later once the flight attendants had him back on the galley floor!

When we were planning we knew that the itinerary was a bit aggressive, but my father had always been strong and very healthy. In fact the only time he ever went to the hospital in his entire 80 years was the overnight for his brain biopsy. We provided rest opportunities for him almost every day.

He was so happy being there - he was interested in everything we saw, and he tried to decipher every Romanian newspaper he got his hands on. He loved showing the two of us his homeland and his relatives - it was a lifelong dream of his to do that, and he got to do it in 2001 and 2006. I only wish that more of his children/grandchildren could have joined us.

SandyBrit, the Rembrand's website is:
http://www.rembrandt.ro/
The hotel is ranked #1 on Tripadvisor.
The rack rates are:

Business class €137 weekdays, €117 weekends, breakfast included (for 2 people add €10 for another breakfast)

Standard room €112 weekdays, €102 weekends

Tourist room €68 weekdays and weekends

We had one of each size room (or else we had a single Tourist and a double Tourist). We figured we'd hang out in the large Business room, and it would have a nice desk for the computer, organizing photos, etc. The hotel worked out great. The only possible negative is that you can only reach the bar/breakfast area via a spiral stair - I don't think it had elevator access, so if stairs are a problem it's something to consider.

The other hotel we were considering is the Hotel Opera, which Fodorite Stu Tower highly recommends. It is on the other side of the central downtown area, maybe 6 blocks from where we were.

Grr, the "edit" function would not let me add the photo link for the Saturday, Sept 23 entry:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...d=8DZsmzZuzbps

Brahmama, I'm glad you are enjoying the photos. There are lots more to come about 2 posts from now, so you may have to pick and choose with that dialup connection.