Night view out of my pension window
I took this because my back pain was making it hard to get to sleep
I had a good rest day / tourist day in Radauti. My back recovered more quickly than I expected, so I was able to function with only annoying back pain, nothing nearly as bad as the day before. I got my work - replace chain, tighten headset, and re-mount front fender mudflap - done quickly and then I went on a walking tour of town and had lunch, then I took a nap. After napping, I did biking exploration by riding out to the town limits to the west and to the south. While biking, I found several other hotel or pension options, but nothing as nice, or as conveniently located as the Blumen where I am staying. It really is a very good place to stay in Radauti.
Night view out of my pension window
I took this because my back pain was making it hard to get to sleep
Jewish Temple
I was told it is open one day a year
Jewish stuff in this area is now tourism driven
Looking west from the west end of town
Sunday morning by the park
A very old - 1300s - church on the monastery grounds
Monastery from my pension
This morning I had breakfast late - 8 AM - and again it was very good. Then I packed and got ready to leave but, before I left. I walked over to the postoffice to mail a letter to a girl in Germany. Nuri, my Hamburg friends younger daughter, gave me a card and an envelope and wanted me to send her a note from somewhere on my tour. Hopefully it will get there and, less hopefully, maybe they will be able to help her read it. My handwriting was never great and, after decades of neglect, it has gotten worse!
I left Radauti about 9:30, heading south west on a smaller that connects to D2 in about 10 km. Riding was OK, but actually less pleasant that riding on a good road in Ukraine. Romanians are not as polite - on the road or off - as Ukranians. The roads are better, but they have a similar mix of vehicles which range for horse drawn wagons and slow cars and trcks to fast cars and big trucks. My big problem was getting passed into by impatient drivers who were behind slow traffic. Another issue was that, unlike Ukraine where gentle horn beeps were used to say I'm behind you and I need to pass, some Romanian drivers, while not nearly as nasty as their counterparts in the US, seem to want to use the horn to mean I'm coming through and you better not be in my way when I get there. That included a few folks who passed into me expecting me to get out of their way. Since some of them were driving big US cars, it wasn't always easy for me to stay on the road. This was less of problem on D2 to Suceava, but became a problem again on D2 after Falticeni. I was very happy to get off onto the smaller road to Tirgu Neampt. Note: smaller and bigger here refer to the amount of traffic, not the physical size of the actual road.
On my way
A pretty Romanian house on the first small road
The junction where the first small road reaches D2
Getting to Suceava wasn't too bad. Getting through Suceava was a pain. It required a lot of steep climbing and, both before and after the steep climbing, there were some places where there were just too many vehicles on the road. I stopped for lunch at a 'pub' that was in Suceava's 'Galetria' mall. That was a mistake. I ordered spagetti carbonara. I got something resembling bad mac and cheese with strips of processed meat thrown in. I should have refused to eat it. As I result of eating it, I had to make a emergency dump stop near Falticen.
A panorama looking east from D2
Leaving Suceava
Getting through this city required a LOT of climbing
and a lot of very urban riding. It wasn't fun
Panorama created by cropping the image from my 24 mm wide angle
Looking towards the mountains after Suceava
Falticeni
There was more steep climbing after Falticeni, but that climbing was rewarded with some nice views from a relatively flat section of road running along the top of a ridge. That lasted for a few km and then there was a fast - 30 mph - long downhill to the exit for the road to Targu Naempt. It was 25 km from that point to the pension I stopped at shortly after entering Targu Naempt. That was mostly very nice riding and, after the difficult initial climb up the ridge and before Targu Naempt, really beautiful.
The start of a long, steep, climb after Falticeni
There is an accent on that 'a' There are also accents
on the a in targu and on the t in Neamt which probably
explain the spelling variations
A real mix of road traffic!
Another pretty Romanian house
Stork feeding chicks.
This was the third occupied stork nest I saw today
This pension's wifi has better upload speed than my pensions for the last two nights and it is cheaper - less than 20E without breakfast. Supper here wasn't spectacular, but it was better than my lunch today. They just cranked up the music here. It is much better music - anything would be! - than what was played at my pension for the last two nights. In both pensions, the noise level did not bother me when I was working, but I needed ear plugs for sleeping the last two nights and I will be using them again tonight. In both places the street noise was the problem, not the music.
Although I was planning to stay in a pension tonight - my back is not up to tent camping - I did look for stealth camping sites on my ride today. There really weren't any. Essentially all the land that wasn't populated, was cultivated and there was very little out there to hide behind. There were no woods on my route. A few times, I saw woods well away from the road, but nothing I could get to.
First big climb over the ridge that TIrgu Neampt is located at the top of
This is followed by a beautiful plateau, then a beautiful valley, and,
finally, and even bigger climb. I took nice images of all of these things
but finally noticed, at the Tirgu Neampt totem, that I had soiled the camera lens
after this image ;-{
Entry totem for Tirgu Neampt
Note, I've also seen it spelled Targu
A final, positive, note: I found a 2 liter bottle that will stay on my back rack. held down by the bungy cord that supports my Townie pannier, with the tool bag sitting on the front of the rack. Unfortunately, that bottle had Fanta in it. I managed to drink all of it - that could have been part of my emergency dump problem today - and now I'll be able to carry over 3 liters of water. Actually, since I brought a 4 Platypus water bladder with me, I'll be able to carry 7 liters, but that is way over kill for Europe.
view from my balcony tonight