Yesterday in my selfish chill post I was saying that my home town is very populated with tourists this time of the year and that not the town itself is the attraction, but the natural park form its vicinity. Today I will share with you some pictures with the landscape from over there and give you some details about it.

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The story begins like this. If you are a tourist and come to Orsova (my hometown) you will have to first find a guest house or a hotel, if you haven't booked it months before your vacation. Once you've done that there are some good restaurants to eat at on the shore of the artificial lake created with Danube's water once the Iron Gates dam was built.

After you've taken your room and had your breakfast and coffee it's time to have some fun and visit the surroundings which I mentioned as being the attractions of the area. You can simply drive to the Gulf of Mraconia where the famous face of Decebal is sculpted in the rocks and see it with your own eyes or you can take a boat that is having daily cruises on Danube and enjoy everything from the water.

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Besides the magnificent scenery of the course of the Danube shaping the rocks of the Carpathian mountains and creating its boilers you will be able to first take some selfies near Tabula Trajana which is a message dedicated to emperor Trajan of the Roman Empire sculpted in the rocks of the Serbian mountains. The message was sculpted on the rocks in the year 103 by Romans to honor their emperor and to write down in history the moment they build over Danube the famous bridge, which is the work of Apollodorus from Damascus, on which the army entered Dacia at that time( which is now Romania).

After taking selfies in front of Tabula Traiana the sailor of the boat will take his passengers to the next destination on the course which is the face of the emperor Decebalus sculpted in the rocks of a mountain in honor of the great ruler that Dacia(Romania) had in the first century.

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The statue is the highest sculpture from Europe having a height of 40,5 meters and 25 meters width. The whole project was initiated and sponsored by Iosif Constantin Dragan, who was a Romanian businessman, historian and writer who lived in Italy for many years and paid his tribute to Decebalus by sculpting the emperors face on the rocks of a mountain. The statue is situated just a few kilometers away from Tabula Trajana as if it was intended to put the two great emperors "face to face", divided by Danube.

The work of the statue was done by a team of locals who worked in shifts, 6 hours a day, for ten years, from 1994 until 2004. Not only that the working conditions were not accessible at all, but on these rocks a lot of vipers had their nests constituting an additional danger. It is said that the team had always anti-venom with it the whole period of time they were working. They could also work only between March and October when the weather "allowed" the climbers to sculpt there safe.

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After leaving Decebalus face sculpted in rocks behind, the next destinations will be Ponicova Cave in which the boats can actually enter and allow tourists to take photos and then The Grot of The Veterans for which I have no link in English to share with you so you can read more about it. It is said though that it was inhabited by the Dacians who prayed to Zamolxis there thousands of years ago and then used by the Austrian and Turk soldiers as a shelter during the WW I and that the legendary treasure of Maria Tereza is buried somewhere in the cave.

In order to enter the cave the "captain" of the boat has to anchor near the shore so the tourists can climb to it and visit it. There is always a guide in there who welcomes the groups of tourists and offers a short presentation of the history of the cave. You will have to pay about €0.80( 3 RON ) a ticket to enter in it and you can also take selfies with the Austrian soldier dummies for that money while you take your history lesson. There are also big chances to meet the famous horned vipers from the area while visiting the grot. I saw one once at about two meters from me last year when entering the grot. Luckily they don't bite unless provoked.

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This being the last touristic attraction to visit in the two hours journey on the Danube the tourists will be taken back on the land of Orsova as fast as possible so other ones can make their tour by sunset. The whole thing costs about €11 and you will be covering about 45 kilometers on water while spending about two hours from your vacation time in the area. If you are into fishing you can find some good spots also where you can catch some big cat fish, carp, perch and a lot of minnows. Other than that there are pools to lay in terrace restaurants to eat your launch and some nice twisted roads on the edge of the course of Danube if you want to go even further into the area.

That was my short description of the touristic attractions around my hometown for which thousands of people are visiting it daily during the summer and the reason why it became a touristic town. I will post in the future more photos with the area once I will get on a boat to do some fishing in the area. That will probably happen in mid July as I planned.

Thanks for reading!