Guest house review: La Mosie, the place to enjoy village life close to Bucharest

I long pondered whether to write about this place, or not. When I discover a place I like, that is less known, and not yet very crowded, I always swing between letting people know about it, or keeping the secret to myself, and enjoying it, noise free. After spending a stress – free weekend at this countryside guest house very close to Bucharest, I’ve decided this one is worth writing about. The place is called La Mosie, and is located 50 kilometers away from Bucharest, on the road towards Targoviste. It was opened in the fall of 2013, so it is quite new. The village where the guest house is located did not mean anything to me before arriving there – apart from its funny name – Bolovani, the Romanian word for rocks –, it had nothing special to it. A village in the plain, somewhere close to Bucharest. We even had some doubts about it – what would such a village offer? - but we were convinced by the pictures on the guest house’s website that we should try it. We were glad we did. The place is much nicer than presented on its site, and we had a couple of wow moments when we arrived and during the weekend. Imagine a large landplot, with lots of old trees, and new trees, a small pond for the household’s ducks, a new wooden barn for a cow, its calf, and for a horse, chickens in a stead, and two rabbits welcoming us when entering the property. Then towards the back of the property was the house, designed by famous architect Serban Sturdza, the new president of the Romanian Architects Order. A one-storey house, built much like an ark, with lots of wood and a nice porch upstairs and downstairs. A big meeting room/ dinning room downstairs, connecting to a huge, fully equipped kitchen – that we got to use at will during the week-end. Then the rooms. They only have 10 double rooms, all of which have entrances towards the porch. This keeps them cool during summer, as the sun does not get directly into the room. The rooms are either matrimonial, or twin, and there are also two rooms connected, for larger families. The interior was one of the aforementioned wow moments: wooden ceiling and wooden floors – new, fair colored wood –, gray wooden furniture, matching the window and door frames. Modern, flat screen TV, and a little table to a corner of the room. Bathrooms vary in size depending on the type of room, but the four rooms our group has occupied had showers, nice finishings, and a beautiful, hand painted touch all over the top part of the walls. Everything was made using materials as closer to nature, and specific to the area as possible. Using a wooden main frame, the house was built with clay bricks. The whole place was developed using EU funds, and some more developments are in different stages on the same property. It’s the kind of place where you can go to rest all week-end, just listening to the sound of nature – frogs in the pond, or in the Ilfov river flowing close by in the back of the property, the sound of crickets; or laying in the grass, playing games or eating in the gazebo. They have lots of board games for guests, and give access to several barbecue sets – we’ve barbecued all weekend! The kitchen can also be used, as only breakfast is included in the room rate, and lunch and dinner can either be prepared by guests themselves, or can be delivered via catering, with prior notice. Everyone in our group was taken aback not only by the house itself, but also by the large kitchen, and by the very friendly staff (they did not know we were to review the place, we did not know we were going to do it either). Guests can bring their bikes to bike around the village – perhaps to the boar reservation nearby, which we did not manage to visit, however. The guest house has WiFi Internet, but beware that cell phone reception is in some areas problematic – an extra reason to stay away from gadgets during your stay there. The conclusion: we will return there to re-charge our batteries, as we love the countryside, and this one is so close to Bucharest.