Chișinău

Chișinău is Europe's least-visited capital, which says nothing about the city and everything about the visitors: a green, unhurried town of parks and acacias rebuilt in white stone and Soviet confidence, where the real monuments are horizontal and underground — two hundred kilometers of wine cellars at Cricova and Mileștii Mici, tunneled cities where the bottles outnumber the country's population several times over.

The sensible traveller walks the Ştefan cel Mare boulevard from the cathedral park to the arcades, buys walnuts and grapes at the Central Market from women who will not let him leave unfed, rows an hour on Valea Morilor's lake, and surrenders the second day to the cellars — down into Mileștii Mici by car, tasting from the largest wine collection on Earth, back up squinting at the daylight like a man returning from a very civilized expedition.

The Guide's honesty: Chișinău will not perform for you — she has no old town to speak of, the twentieth century saw to that — and her pleasure is the unperformed kind: markets, parks, long lunches, wine poured by the people who made it; English here is younger than Russian and Romanian: learn 'mulțumesc' and watch doors open; and the cellars require a booking and a designated driver. The wine is the itinerary.