Join Us in Romania!

 

✏️ Sketching & Adventures in Romania

September 17 – October 1, 2025
🎨 With Christina Wald & Dr. Ioana Popescu

Discover Romania’s rich history, castles, and culture — sketchbook optional!

🛏️ 14 nights in hand-picked historic hotels
🚌 Comfortable group transport
🍳 Daily breakfast
🏰 Entry to 3 stunning castles included
✈️ Airport transfers included

Highlights:

• Bucharest – Explore Romania’s lively capital & Old Town

• Transfăgărășan Road – One of the world’s most scenic drives

• Sibiu – Saxon citadel with medieval charm

• Corvin Castle – Fairytale Gothic fortress

• Alba Iulia – Iconic citadel and symbol of Romanian unity

• Bethlen-Haller Castle – French-Renaissance gem with Baroque flair

• Sighișoara – UNESCO medieval town & birthplace of Dracula

• Bran Castle – Legendary “Dracula’s Castle”

• Brașov – Charming walled city in the Carpathians

• Peleș Castle – Lavish royal palace with secret doors and Klimt frescoes

🎨 For sketchers: Christina Wald will guide you through amazing locations to fill your travel sketchbooks.
🗺️ For non-sketchers: Dr. Ioana Popescu leads alternate excursions: museums, hikes, and cultural gems.

💲 Price:
$3,800 double occupancy
$4,100 single occupancy

🌐 SketchingTours.com

Reserve your spot now!

Not Included: 

Airfare

Some Meals

Travel Insurance

Romania 2024

 

We had an amazing visit this year to Romania! The itinerary was very different from our 2022 trip and we visited Constanța and the Black Sea.

I worked to journal every day but I did get a few days behind. I keep pushing myself to write more.

Once again, I will be putting together another travelogue. I am still deciding on the cover image and keep changing my mind.

I had my main Sillman & Birn book and a few feeder sketchbooks including a square zigzag I will post later.

So many great stories I look forward to expanding in the travelogue.

I also just updated the website for our September 2025 trip!

We have two 15-day trips available. 

Stay tuned!

Join us in Romania in June, 2024!

 

Our website is up and running and we have two itineraries in June, a 10-day and 15-day.

I can email the detailed itineraries. The 10-day is a deep dive into Transylvania and the 15-day goes beyond to the Black Sea and north. 

See more here: sketchingtours.com

Romania 2024

June 2024! We are doing it again!

15 or 10 days! We have a different itinerary for the two weeks and all Transylvania and Bucharest for the one week!

More info and a website soon

1 29 Wed București

2 30 Thu București

3 31 Fri Brașov

4 1 Sat Brașov

5 2 Sun Brașov

6 3 Mon Piatra Neamț

7 4 Tue Piatra Neamț

8 5 Wed Piatra Neamț

9 6 Thu Iași

10 7 Fri Iași

11 8 Sat Constanța

12 9 Sun Constanța

13 10 Mon București

14 11 Tue București

15 12 Wed airport

OR

1 14 Fri București

2 15 Sat București

3 16 Sun Sibiu

4 17 Mon Sibiu

5 18 Tue Sighișoara

6 19 Wed Brașov

7 20 Thu Brașov

8 21 Fri București

9 22 Sat București

10 23 Sun airport

Sign up for info here!

Drawing Attention

 

I wrote an article for Drawing Attention about our wonderful trip to Romania!

We are taking sketchers back in 2024! I hope to go in July for a weekend when I am visiting France for an artist residency.

Read it here: https://issuu.com/drawingattention/docs/da_march_2023_/46

Sketch in Romania with Christina and Ioana

 

FIRST DEPOSIT IS DUE NOVEMBER 30; WE ARE LIMITED TO 20 GUESTS!

Write ioana.travels2@gmail.com for additional materials and to arrange the deposit.

Years in the planning, this is the ultimate urban sketching adventure!

Trip details: http://christinawald.blogspot.com/p/urban-sketching-2022-tour-with-ioana.html

Romania has so many wonderful landscapes, castles, fortresses... I LOVE sketching there. Join us for 2 weeks of adventure.

And here are some write-ups from our trip in 2014: http://christinawald.blogspot.com/search/label/Romania

Christina and Ioana

Happy Easter! Bunnies and Painted Monasteries

Cherry blossoms and bunnies... 'Tis the season

I do plan to paint this image, but do to finishing my next book, it will probably be by the Eastern Orthodox Easter.

Speaking of which, this is a good time to post some of the amazing art at the pained Monasteries in Romania.

Not only are there the ones dating back to the 1400s, but they are building new ones! Such a fascinating art form. It was nice to see the artist credits on the new ones.

Growing up catholic, it is interesting to see parallel but different imagery.

Judgement Day painting on the Voroneț Monastery done in 1547

Detail of the seraphim at the Humor Monastery painted in 1535

Lives of the saints or rather the martyrdom of them, Voroneț Monastery

More seraphim at Voroneț Monastery

A new depiction of Judgement Day

Seraphim detail

New Judgement Day at a church in Bucharest

Detail of the Judgement Day painting in Bucharest. Ioana and I were pleased to see the artists credited inside.

All of the Judgement Day paintings have the people being 'reconstituted', even if devoured by wild beasts. Such delightful imagery!

My monastery sketches and more of my write ups are here.

http://christinawald.blogspot.com/2014/11/trip-to-romania-part-3-painted.html

Trip to Romania Part 4: Maramureș and the Painted Cemetery

Beautiful wooden chapel next to the tallest wooden church in Europe.

Me sketching quickly

Sketch of one of the chapels in Maramureș next to the church with that is tallest wooden building in Europe. I loved the little chapel next to it and drew there. The gorgeous arched gateway was a good place to sketch from.

Ioana took this picture of me entering the monastery complex. The chapel is hidden behind the trees, the tallest wooden church is on the left.

Chapel detail

The architecture is very different from Brasov and the Moldovan areas.
We were very close to the Ukraine here. This was also the town with the Merry Cemetery called Săpânța.

Taken from my balcony overlooking the cemetery

We stayed at a wonderful pension here called Anuta. (Basically what they call a bed and breakfast there). The owners were super friendly and even invited us to try their homemade brandy! 

The location was next to the Merry Cemetery. It was hard to convince my husband that was a selling point when he saw this picture I snapped from my bedroom.

When we first entered the town, we stopped by a woman's house where she showed us socks and blankets she had woven. The folk craft in Romania are high art. Gorgeous stuff!

She had Ioana take my picture at the loom.

I have several posts after this including castles, more painted church details and I cannot believe I skipped posting about Sighișoara!!!

The Merry Cemetery in the daytime...

Greetings from Săpânța!

Trip to Romania Part 3: Painted Monastaries

Me Sketching at Voronet

We went to a lot of monasteries old and new. Of course the star monasatries are the old ones...

Above is Voronet Monastery in the Moldovan area of Romania. It was built in 1488 by Stephen the Great. The painting have survived war, weather and disuse. They are now restored including the paintings on the inside. They are not restoring the exterior paintings as far as I know which I think is a good thing.

This was the only place where we ran into an American tour group.

Detail from the exterior of Voronet. All of these churches have paintings of the Last Judgement... This is the place you want to avoid...

This is from the Humor Monastery located in Mănăstirea Humorului.

Me sketching at Humor Monastary

Detail of the battle in Constantinople.

Above is the Humor Monastery, a painted monastery located in Mănăstirea Humorului.  The frescoes were originally painted in 1535 and this one shows Constantinople defending itself from a Persian invasion in 626. The Persians were illustrated as Turks which is proof that the news is always prone to revisionism even if it is really old news

A lot of the monasteries had these cool seraphim images depicted as wing clusters with lots of eyeballs.


I know I have been slow to post these images. But there is MUCH more! Next up, the Merry Cemetery and a stones throw from the Ukraine border...