Breakfast remained chaotic because there was another coach party abandoning their luggage right outside the lift again and taking up all the seats and tables – but with a new bit of fun, using all the glasses! And because the juice dispenser dispenses a certain amount, you can’t just grab a coffee cup and fill that because it overflows! One of the wide ones nearly works as long as you slurp it before you try to carry it anywhere.

Anyway, breakfast survived and it was time to catch two buses which took nearly two hours (including time waiting for the second bus at Gara Baneasi) out to a village 40km north of Bucharest. This is apparenty a popular place for summer days out for city folk but I was the only person who got off the bus at Monastery Street. I was going to the grave of Vlad the Impaler. Seemed a suitably spooky Halloweeny thing to do and an interesting half-day adventure anyway. I was a bit nervous. I’d been nervous about the journey a few days ago but now I’ve figured out how the buses work so that’s fine. I was nervous about the kilometre walk through a very villagey village to the causeway to the island where the monastery is situated and I didn’t really stop being nervous about that until I’d arrived on the island. And I was nervous about dogs. In 2009, Bucharet was overrun with street dogs, a side-effect of systematization, which feels like a big word for “Ceaușescu demolished entire neighbourhoods and villages and moved everyone into apartment blocks” in which dogs apparently didn’t fit. It was the first thing I noticed on Saturday night, the utter lack of street dogs and I googled it. No, it wasn’t the most successful TNR programme of all time. After a four-year-old was viciously mauled, Romania revolted and an old law about stray dogs was brought back. 25,000 dogs were put down, 23,000 were adopted out (mostly to other countries; Germany and the UK were big adopters) and 2000 are still in shelters. Bucharest is pretty much free of street dogs but you’ll find a few on the outskirts of the city and there are about half a million still roaming the rest of the country. Ilfov county, north of Bucharest, still has plenty, and Snagov is in Ilfov. So I was nervous about the dogs. In Tbilisi, they’re all vaccinated and neutered and are generally good-natured and belong to everyone. Romanian street dogs have more of a tendency to be vicious.

I saw three or four stray dogs in my kilometre of Snagov. None of them looked vicious. Mostly they looked bored. One was enjoying the sun on a stone seat. It’s when they run in packs that things get bad but these were solo. So I got to the bridge unmauled, walked across, enjoyed the autumn woods around the lake and arrived on the island to find a small child feeding three large goats in a paddock. Very nice. Very rural. Very- what is that?? That is an ostrich. I’m used to ostriches on farms and petting zoos and places of that kind. I’m not used to ostriches on tiny farmsteads on tiny villages in Romania.

It’s all of about 100m from the bridge to the monastery, which is also a tiny church, founded by Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Tepes in Romanian. Vlad Dracul, it turns out, was his father, and it means that the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg invited him to join the Order of the Dragon. Vlad the Dragon and it wasn’t even the famous one. The famous one is (allegedly) buried in the monastery. As I entered, a man stood up and said in English “the entrance tax is 20”, which I was expecting, hence getting cash out yesterday and breaking my 100 lei into something more manageable on the way to the bus this morning. Since there were signs up saying no photography and he hadn’t mentioned it, it kind of felt like offering a bribe to say “And I hear another 10 for photos?” which he nodded at and recorded it all formally in a book.

It’s a tiny church but every inch is painted. Almost every inch. There are a few sides hidden from certain angles that haven’t been painted. And then there’s a slab on the floor with a candle, a vase of flowers and a picture of old Vlad. Actually, there’s apparently no tomb under there and even if there was, his head was supposedy removed and sent to Turkey. But this is where they advertise as his grave and no doubt the monastery does a good trade in Vlad tourists who would otherwise have no reason to even know this place exists. That’s about it for the entire island. It’s tiny. The bridge is relatively new, although Vlad apparently had one in his day. If you wanted to tourist over here a few years ago, you had to hire a boat from a local and row across. I’m glad I didn’t have to. I have no idea where to start with hiring a boat from a local and I’m not brilliant at rowing. I’d probably get there but it would be a bit of a zigzag.

Back in Bucharest, I crossed a few things off my to-do list. Lunch in the massive park, walk to the aviator statue (which is not at Aviator Square, obviously!) and then bus down to the Roman Athenaeum, which isn’t Roman. In fact, it turns out that isn’t even its name. It’s the Romanian Athenaeum and it’s a concert hall with a big domed roof and columns at the front which was built in the 1880s/90s. It also turns out to be a 17 minute walk from my hotel, which is a minute quicker than the quickest way of getting home via public transport. Cross the road opposite the Athenaeum and just keep walking. Crossing the road is the slow bit.

Tomorrow I’ve got another old error to fix – my trip to Brasov. In 2009, I jumped off the train 20 miles early. Tomorrow I’ll be waving at Predeal as I pass and actually arriving in Brasov.