September 26, 2018 Breakfast – Casa di Bran. Dinner – Li Wu

September 26, 2018 Breakfast – Casa di Bran. Dinner – Li Wu

We awakened at 8:00 and went next door to the restaurant of the hotel.

A Swedish style breakfast was included with the cost of the room.

It included a wide array of items, three kinds of cold cuts, an omelet, yogurt, muesli, sweet bread, pannecotta, plum compote, and many other items, plus juice, coffee, and tea.

Aaron and Monica joined us and Monica ordered a fresh ham omelet that was much better than the lukewarm one in the warmer.

We enjoyed a large breakfast.  I ate muesli, pannecotta, and yogurt.  Then the three meats and an omelet. Then the fruit bread with compote and tea.

After breakfast we walked the three blocks to the Bran Castle.  This is the castle used as the source of Bram Stoker’s book, Dracula.

Glad the Impaler’s father was named Vlad Dracul, which appears to be the source of the name.  Actually Dracul and Vlad were probably assassinated by the Turks.

Until very recently a wing of the Hapsburg family lived in the castle.  The last member of the family was expelled from Romania by the Nazis and now is a designer of glassware in NYC.

The castle was built on five or six levels over 100s of years and guards an important pass between two mountain ranges of the Carpathian Mountains where the owners exacted customs duties from all who passed through the pass.

Built on the site of a Teutonic Knights stronghold dating from 1212, the castle was first documented in an act issued by Louis I of Hungary on November 19, 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Brasov) the privilege to build the Citadel.

Bran (Dracula Castle) RomaniaAlthough Stoker never visited Transylvania, the Irish author relied on research and his vivid imagination to create the dark and intimidating stomping ground of Count Dracula, leading to persistent myths that it was once the home of Vlad Tepes, ruler of Walachia. Built on the site of a Teutonic Knights stronghold dating from 1212, the castle was first documented in an act issued by Louis I of Hungary on November 19, 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Brasov) the privilege to build the Citadel.

Bran (Dracula Castle) RomaniaAlthough Stoker never visited Transylvania, the Irish author relied on research and his vivid imagination to create the dark and intimidating stomping ground of Count Dracula, leading to persistent myths that it was once the home of Vlad Tepes, ruler of Walachia. While the association with Dracula is sketchy at best, the castle continues to hold a strong attraction for all fans of the Count.

From 1920 to 1957 Bran served as royal residence, a gift of the people of Brasov to Queen Marie of Romania. The castle is now a museum open to tourists, displaying art and furniture collected by Queen Marie.

After visiting the castle we bought pastries at local pastry shop and took them back to the hotel restaurant and ate them with cups of tea.

We then drove to Saiana and went to the tram to visit the Sphinx but it was closed due to high winds.  So we went to the Halewood Winery where we tasted champagnes and a very good Still Pinot Noir Rose and ordered 4 meat rolls and roasted peppers.

After the light lunch we returned to Bucharest at 6:00.  We stopped at a supermarket and bought borsc magic, a bottle of Bran Cherry liqueur, a chocolate bar, and several beers.

 Monica dropped us off at the apartment around 6:00.

We had a drink with Aaron and then he left to have dinner with Monica and we tried to decide upon a restaurant.

We finally settled on a restaurant named Terrace that served French food with a back up Italian restaurant about 1 block away.  We walked to the location but Suzette’s map function was not working well.

We had passed a Vietnamese restaurant named Li Wu on our way to the mistaken location, so when we discovered that we did not have a good location, so we decided to go back to Li Wu.

Li Wu is a fast food restaurant without table service.  We took a menu with descriptions and pictures and two Saigon beers and reviewed the menu for several minutes until we both agree on two dishes we wanted fried duck breasts and beef with bamboo shoots, and that we wanted to order two fried pork egg rolls and an order of rice noodles.  All of the food cost 60 lei, which is $15.00.

The beef and bamboo shoots was amazing.  In addition to very tender pieces of beef and bamboo shoots, it contained slices of fresh sautéed cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, white mushroom, pieces of wood ear, slices of fresh shitake mushroom, and onion.

The other dish was even better. It seemed like two duck breasts were fried to perfection and sliced and laid on a bed of stir –fried vegetables  in a similar brown sauce and the same selection of vegetables.  The rice noodles were cooked in boiling water and then served in a bowl.  There were three sauces.  I put a mushroom soy and a spicy sweet sauce on the noodles.

The fried egg rolls were served with a rice vinegar and fish sauce sauce and were the least interesting dish.

The beef was as tender as any we have ever tasted as were the vegetables.  There was so much food we could not finish the duck, so we put the rest of it in a plastic container and took it home.  LibWu is the best restaurant we have eaten at in Bucharest, for the money.  It is an absolute winner.  The Vietnamese chef is wonderful, although the dishes we ate were both Chinese style dishes.

We walked back to the apartment and went to bed.

The massage last was wonderful.  The masseuse put my hips back into alignment and loosened up my calves and thighs so I could walk without pain today.

Bon Appetit.