Cooking and Cultural Trip to Romania

About Tour

Come to Romania to enjoy the real life of this beautiful country. You’ll meet local people, have the chance to see and feel how they live, what they cook. Romania is an interesting country. We are at the Eastern border of Europe, having in our cuisine influences from the Orient but also Western ones. For example, you will find here the famous Mediterranean “sarma” (to be found in Turkey and Greece) but in a Romanian version. This means that we do not use vine leaves, but sour cabbage instead; we do not fill it with rice, but with pork meat; it is not an appetizer, but a main course and we can tell that the taste is wonderful! Come and meet our mixed culture, our orthodox world and our pre-Christian traditions.

You’ll receive a Romanian cookbook in English with recipes that you will cook yourself and we guarantee you will not have the same food twice in your meals. You’ll visit three most important regions in Romania and enjoy one full day in each region with the locals.

1 st Day

Arrival in Romania

Included highlights:

  • Arrival in Bucharest,
  • Welcome cocktail, briefing, dinner
  • Check-in.

Included meals:
  • Dinner
2 nd Day

Discover the European capital of culture in 2007

Included highlights:

  • Short sightseeing of Bucharest
  • Departure to Sibiu
  • See the most beautiful orthodox monastery in Wallachia, Curtea de Arges monastery.
  • Short city tour of Sibiu, an important cultural center in Romania, which was chosen to be the European capital of culture in 2007.
  • Dinner and accommodation.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Dinner
3 rd Day

Your first encounter with the local life

Included highlights:

  • Take part at the orthodox service in the village.
  • Take part at the cooking process itself. You will be divided in 2 teams, each team will have to go to a hostess and cook a menu, different from each other. After the service, each team will go and eat what the others have cooked. You’ll learn how to make:
  1. - Dumplings soup/ Noodles soup
  2. - Eggplant Salad / Baked peppers salad
  3. - Romanian stew / Ragout
  4. - Romanian cheese pie/ Crunchies
  5.  
  • Paint icons on glass
  • Return to Sibiu
  • Light dinner

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Lunch
  • Dinner
4 th Day

Let's go to Bucovina

Included highlights:

  • Depart early in the morning
  • Reach the Northern region of Romania called Bucovina, over Cluj and Bistrita,
  • Have the chance to visit at least one of the famous UNESCO painted monasteries from 16th century.
  • Dinner and check-in.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Dinner
5 th Day

Learning how to cook local food

Included highlights:

  • Go to a local family and learn how to cook local food. You will cook:
  1. - Mushroom soup/ Local chicken soup with garlic
  2. - The famous “sarmale”/ Chicken with sour cream
  3. - 2 different local cakes “papanasi” (a kind of donuts) and “poale in briu”
  • Swap and taste what the others have cooked for you.
  • Learn how to paint the famous Easter eggs from Bucovina.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Lunch
6 th Day

Head back to the Southern Romania

Included highlights:

  • Head back to the Southern Romania, over Bicaz Gorge
  • Visit the famous UNESCO citadel in Transylvania, Sighisoara,
  • Reach the Brasov region.
  • Visit Brasov with its famous Black Church.
  • Arrive to our hostesses.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  •  
7 th Day

A new cooking lesson

Included highlights:

Today you’ll learn how to cook:

  • Meatballs in soup and a special salad (salata a la boef)
  • A special dish based on fish (saramura de peste) with corn mush and “plachie de peste” another dish based on fish
  • Famous local cake (cozonac) and Romanian pancakes with different fillings. In the afternoon we’ll visit the Dracula Castle.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Lunch
8 th Day

Get some experience of a professional chef

Included highlights:

  • Departure to Bucharest, through Sinaia
  • Stop to visit the Peles Castle.
  • Visit the kitchen of the most famous Restaurant in Bucharest - Jaristea, and get some experience of a professional chef.
  • Dinner.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast
  • Dinner
9 th Day

Departure home

Included highlights:

  • Sightseeing of Bucharest
  • Depart to the airport
  • Fly back home.

Included meals:
  • Breakfast

What People Say

More reviews ›

Have you ever wanted to go on a culture-wine-food tour? In California? France? Italy? Please, have some imagination! Be a little adventurous and go on one in Romania and Moldova. 

It was my good luck to participate in a tour organized by Ways Travel, during which i checked out the many wonders of Romania and Moldova. 

Our group on the bus was an international gang of nine – a Belgian, a German, a Norwegian, an Australian, a few Americans of interesting ethnic alloys and me, dual Dutch and American citizen. What can I say, it was an experience just sitting on a bus with these people and hear their war stories and get initiated into the workings of the behind-the-scenes travel industry. 

Leader of our tribe was the fabulous tour guide Victoria, who speaks four languages, English, German, Russian, Romanian, one of those people who makes a simple bilingual person such as myself feel humble and uneducated. 

The trip was a symphony of history, food, drink, music and dance. Dancing with the Gypsies no less. I tell you, it was fabulous, it was intoxicating. We got history – a dizzying whirl of wars and battles and bloody strife. Of conquests and annexations, of armies rampaging through the countryside, raping, pillaging and impaling. We heard colorful tales about Dacian tribes, the Roman Empire, the Red Horde, the Saxons, the Ottoman Empire, the communist era under Ceausescu. And let’s not forget to mention good old Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, who hailed from Transylvania. Really, we deserved every drop of hootch we got along the way to recover from all the tragedies we vicariously suffered through. 

In Romania we loved the beautiful towns of Sibiu and Sighisoara. In Sighisoara we missed seeing the house where Dracula was born because a movie was being filmed and they’d closed it off for visitors. Fortunately, we had a liqueur and brandy tasting to cheer us up. We hadn’t had lunch yet and our stomachs were empty, which helped raise the mood quickly. 

A highlight was our visit to the home of a Roma family in Transylvania and learning more about their culture and lifestyle. (You can read a story about this on my blog here.) Not all Gypsies are beggars living in the streets of large cities. It’s always a good thing to be disabused of your prejudices and preconceived notions. 

We stayed in excellent hotels and lodges, as well as in a humble hostel run by a monastery. We ate fancy restaurant food as well as simple village fare. We saw exquisite as well as cheery architecture, visited opulent cathedrals as well as the modest underground monastery chapel in Orhei Vechi, not far from Chisinau. The vino flowing across the miles was a charming mix of the good, the bad and the holy. The holy being the wine we tasted in a monastery, blessed by the priests. Unfortunately, the blessing did not transform it into nectar of the gods, but the dinner there was quite gourmet, all prepared from food grown by the monks without chemical assistance. 

We also visited Transnistria, which is a rather unique place, as most of you will already know. It is also home to the famous Kvint brandy factory and would you believe, we went there for a brandy dégustation – seven varieties of brandy. It was very informative, interesting and intoxicating. It was also lunch time, but fortunately there was food. We eventually struggled out of there, back on the bus, across the border that is not a border, and traveled down to the Purcari wineries in the south of Moldova where we were treated to . . . you guessed it . . . a wine tasting. Of ten types of wine. Not just any old village plonk, either. No, we got to sip the wine of kings, queens and tsars. Our livers got a workout that day. 

I’m going to stop here. There was more, much more, but I don’t want to give away everything, because what you should do, really, is check out Ways Travel’s website at www.ways.md .

Natalia is an excellent guide, full of interesting information about the places we went, recommended a very good hotel, a good van and driver. She is everything else you want/expect from a tour guide, and she was also a hard-working, intelligent and caring member of our team. Without her skills, flexibility and perseverance, our trip would not have been as successful as it was. She really cares about her clients, and has the willingness and ability to make whatever needs to happen, happen. She was great!

During my recent holiday to Moldova, I was lucky enough to have Miss Victoria Odobescu as a guide and driver on two occasions.  One day we went to Orheiul Vechi, and another to Soroca, the XV fort guarding the Dnistre river crossing.  Miss Odobescu speaks very good colloquial English, her range is wide and is a confident and safe driver.  Victoria, was exceptionally well-informed about the history, culture, and people of Moldova. In addition, she was very sensitive to my needs and wants. I highly recommend the services provided by Victoria Odobescu. I am sure she will have success in her career in Tourism.