Out of office storytime

It’s already been a few weeks since I am back from vacation, but I thought I’d share a couple stories (and pics, obv) from my time off.

We spend a week away from the big city, in the middle of Romania in Harghita County and shortly after we arrived I have unpacked my witch hat and my gear and asked my better half to help me take the pics I posted here. The rest of the days looked the same: walks around the city, taking photographs, drinking coffee and tea, eating kurtos kolacs, reading and watching movies.

Hm, what was I drinking in the middle picture? Why of course that’s tea. 🙂 Our accommodation was closed one full day and I really wanted some hot tea in the evening and so we went in the city to look for take away tea and barely found some, but at the last moment one nice lady from a pastry shop kindly washed a 500 ml water bottle she had around and boiled some water for the tea and so we went “home” with hot water. Really nice gesture honestly!

In a different day we did something more interesting and that is going on a one day trip to Lake Saint Anna. You can check tripadvisor here for more info on the place.

We had a really nice time there, the road to get there is insanely beautiful and we were in the middle of autumn so it was twice as gorgeous. The trip was organized by this local agency and before actually going to the lake we went to the Tinovul Mohos which is a nature preserved place where you can find snakes, spiders and even bears. We did see one of these three but hold on.

I don’t have pictures from the reservation because 1. our guide said that there are however many species of spiders and snakes so I was kinda scared and 2. I was trying to focus to not fall as there are wet sands everywhere and you have to walk on these wooden logs that weren’t that stable. It kind was a wild ride, we were deep into the forest and this was not the wildest thing that happened that day.

We eventually came back to the edge of the peak to then go down to Lake Saint Anna and the road there was also in between the trees, kind of zig zag road, very nice – here are some pics.

We then arrived down closer to the lake and before actually admiring it, our guide liked to either tell some stories or some (bad) jokes. So we stopped for a little before continuing to the edge of the lake. The lake is so beautiful, we bought some coffee and some more kurtos kolacs and started to admire it, breathing in the fresh air.

I was going back and forth from the table we had our things on, to closer to the lake to take pics and then we saw a momma bear and her cubs on the other side on the lake where we stopped earlier with our guide. Crazy! We were just there 5 mins ago. So naturally we kept an eye on them, here’s a pic I took before we actually ran to get away as we didn’t had any place to stop and let them pass.

Our guide called a mini van from the top of the mountain where we started the trip and we were all rushed to get into it. The initial plan was to climb back on foot but it obviously wasn’t a solution. The guy running the little coffee/kurtos shop said that that was like the 3rd time they have come looking for food. So sad they have to venture outside the forest for food.

Still kind of high on adrenaline we went back to the parking lot and started the trip back to the little town. The town is way lower than the lake so right before going into the fog and darkness I kindly asked the driver to stop so I can take a picture of the fields, it looks like a painting, I love it!

That night I also looked for a chance to photograph the stars but only got the moon.