Italy, Romania and some USA

We last left you in Italy, trying desperately to drink all of our wine! We managed to meet up with Sarah and Alex, and so the final total was 15 bottles of wine and a bottle of whiskey. We decided to post four of the bottles back to Australia, huge mistake! The whole process took around 4 hours, and involved 3 different post offices. We ended up having to actually go to the Port to be able to send a parcel by seamail! The remainder of the wine went in Sarah's bag, and our two bags. It actually survived the flights and was enjoyed by all during the Romanian time.

Our time in Romania was wonderful. We arrived about 5 days before the wedding, so we had time to take a short trip to Sinaia to visit a couple of castles that were built in the late 19th centurary. We also visited various Romanian relatives, and were thourougly fed the whole time we were there! The wedding was very enjoyable, and not too long, even for an Orthodox wedding! Naturally, the amound of food was incredible, four full plates of food for each person, and then the option of soup at 4am. Weddings in Romania very rarely finish before 6am, but we didn't last that long and went home around 4am. Ana of course looked stunning and Pete looked great too!

After the wedding us 'young' people travelled up to Suceava to look at the painted monastaries. The monastaries were painted in the late 15th Centurary, as a way of introducing the bible stories to the all of the population. Since Orthodox churches are often very small, not many people could be in the church to listen to the mass, so the outside of these monastaries are painted as well as the inside. The next day Jim and I headed out alone on a bus to go through the Carpathian mountains, while the others went to Bran (Dracula's Castle). Despite warnings that we would be mugged or killed, we found the whole process very straightfoward, and enjoyed ourselves immensly. We spent the night at Lacu Rusu (Red Lake) which you reach by driving through some of the most amazing gorges I have ever seen. The lake was formed after an earthquake caused a damning of the river, so the lake has bits of tree trunks sticking out of it, very interesting! We then got a bus down to Brasov and met up with the rest of the group to return to Bucharest.

We are now in the USA and are heading out from LA in about an hour. We are planning to go through the National Parks between here and Oregon. Death Valley today, then Sequoia and Yosemite. A few days in Oregon, returning to LA via the coast (visiting a couple of Jim's friends on the way), a few more days in LA, and then home!

Of course, the most important part of our upcoming journey is to find somewhere to watch Port win the Grand Final!!