Sinaia

Tuesday finds us Sinaia, up in the mountains. Sinaia is a resort, "the pearl of the Carpathians," so-named because a 17th century Romanian noble-person visited the Holy Land and came back to establish--what else?--a monastery here. Tomorrow I hope to climb Omu Peak, from Busteni, down the valley. But today we just took in the town here and its sights. We are camped, as it were, in a private parking lot in town, up from the railway and police stations, assuming the 20 lei we paid for the day will include the night.

Not every town has a New Montana hotel

The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin stayed
here in the fall of 1927, visiting, one assumes,
the great Romanian composer Georg
Eonescu, a Sinaia resident

There are a number of WWI cemeteries nearby, where  German, Hungarian, 
and Romanian soldiers are buried  together; most of these say "an unknown 
Romanian hero"

Basilica at the Sinaia monastery; 19th century; we are so monasteried-out we 
did not even contemplate going inside

Peles, Carol I's German Renaissance summer palace, late 19th century; we are
so castled-out...

The path up to Peles is lined with these trinket shops,  scores of them, all with 
pretty much the same merchandise

PS  Not everything in Romania is likable, but the availability of free wifi certainly is; it seems like almost anywhere we go, we turn on the computer, and shazamm, we are connected!