Travel 2 Moldova, my brief story of a short break in Moldova Options

[chrisrein]

Dear all,

after I asked a lot of questions before I went to Moldova, I would like to file my (short) travel story.

We intended to stay longer in Moldova, but as we had more plans on holiday, we only managed to stay in Moldova for 2.5 days.

The border control post near Iasi was very straight forward, but it would have been easy if there was a sign that told us: 'Pay your road tax on the right 300 metres before the gate into Moldova.....'

We slept in an appartment in Hotel Mesogios, and because it was not that busy, we were able to arrange a very nice discount on the standard price. The staff helped us very good, and they speak very good English.

The city centre of Chisinau felt very relaxed. It's a place to feel home easily and despite there are not many World heritage monuments, there is still a lot to see. Is there anyone who knows why there is no water in the big lake near the university (in the park) and why we were not allowed to enter the site of the national heritage to the great war?

I found it very awkward that prices in restaurants differ so much: sometimes you pay like 12 MDL for your beer, and at the terrace beside they wanted 40 MDL. Furthermore it was difficult to get money out of most ATM's: in the end we only managed to use an ATM from a Romanian bank, the rest of the banks did not accept our Dutch cards.

Later we visited Old Orhei and Milici Miste Winery. Old Orhei: very nice nature, not easy to find however, but certainly a great daytrip. We went to Milici Miste without an appointment, and it was a little bit difficult to get in the caves, but we were very glad that Lilia agreed that we could join some other (small) group. It was great to see and hear a lot about the wines in the caves! If you plan on visiting this winery: ask for the same tourguide!

Afterwords we went to PMR, for more information see another post of me.

Leaving Moldova at Palanca was easy, we just did not understand way we had to pay some Lei at the bank overthere in order to leave the country by our car. As the Ukrainian checkpoint is about 10 kilometres away from the Moldovan checkpoint, it would have been easy if there was a sign to tell us that we had to turn left towards Odessa after the Moldovan checkpoint.

Summary: we were sorry that we had only little time to visit Moldova this time, and the country is certainly worth a visit as there is more to see than we expected before!