2019
Almost nobody visits Moldova but we couldn’t just pass it by. It jumps hugely up the geek scale by being accessible from Bucharest on an old Soviet era overnight train. We booked tickets on the sleeper which takes about 12 hours and involves your own 2 person compartment where you make up the beds. At the border the entire train is removed from one set of bogies and loaded onto another as the gauge changes. Passport and customs controls are undertaken and you bowl into Chisinau in time for breakfast.
After a days sightseeing around the city centre, mostly grand buildings, triumphal arches, churches and parks we had 1 night in accommodation before a very early start at the airport for our flight to Kiev. Taxi arranged at 4am but we found we were locked in teh hotel. Fortunately after a bit of a panic looking at whether we could leap from windows I remembered that the hotel staff had emerged from a door upstairs when we checked in. A quick knock on the door, a sleepy person emerged and we were on our way.
Nice topiary outside the parliament building.
