After leaving Vișeu de Sus we headed to Săpânța, Romania (pronounced Sapantza). We stopped in Sighetul Marmației, Romania to visit a museum that is dedicated to when Romania was a communist country. If you have any silly ideas about how wonderful communism is, you should visit this museum, which was a prison at one time for people who the government saw as a threat to their ideals. I did not take many pictures at the museum and I will not post the ones that did take here.

We arrived in Săpânța and checked into our pension, which was within walking distance to the Ukrainian border.

Our pension in Săpânța below. I would guess that there were 10 to 12 rooms that could be rented in total and the pension had a small restaurant/kitchen in the back that wasn’t serving food while we were there. We went into town the night we were there and found a nice restaurant to eat at.

The next morning I noticed a stork flying back and forth and carrying sticks in its beak next to our pension. I walked out front and saw the nest it was building with its mate across the road from us.

Once everyone was ready to go, we headed back into town and visited the “Merry Cemetery”. The colorful wooden headstones tell a (usually comical) story of the person buried there.

It felt kind of weird taking pictures in the cemetery and I wanted to be respectful so I did not take too many pictures there. We walked around the souvenir shops, bought a few things and then walked to where my brother-in-law had parked his car.

A wooden church in Săpânța, Romania.

A typical semi-truck found in Romania.

After visiting Săpânța, we headed to a village museum, which I will post about next.