I took a taxi because I was kind of tired (it was late afternoon). The traffic was insane and it took about 1 3/4 hours to get to the IC hotel. I would guess 2 hours would be on the safe side...

I made this journey last Saturday (July 7th) for the same KLM flight.

The Intercontinental is on the north east side of University Plaza. Bus 783 is on the southeast side. She should walk down the tunnel that leads to the metro and under the streets but stay left and get to the south side of the square.

| IC
-------
| bus 783

If she doesn't have a return bus ticket yet, then she will have to buy one from the stand. Just say "Otopeni Airport" and they'll figure it out. For some reason, it seems they only sell it as a return and that it's 5 Lei. The way down, though, I was able to just pay 2 Lei to the bus driver (??) Near the stand there is a small covered bus area. 783 will pull up to it - just wave when she sees it.

The journey on Saturday took me about 1:15 (11:15 am - 12:30 pm), due to traffic and construction on the route to Otopeni. I would imagine it would be a bit worse on weekdays. The bus was very crowded towards the end but I enjoyed spending just a couple dollars to get to the airport. Note: There are two stops at the airport. The first is the domestic terminal and the last is the international terminal.

Leaving OTP tomorrow morn. Hypodermic needles and Gypsies!
 

We'll be leaving tomorrow morning, after a mostly good trip to ARN and OTP.

We went on a day trip to Sinaia yesterday (166 RON for 3 people RT), which was a nice break from Bucharest. On leaving Gare Nord, we had a hell of time finding a taxi that would take us the relatively short trip. It was after 10pm, and we were charged on the #3 rate on the meter. Not sure if that was right, but we had gotten the same thing during the day, which I knew was a rip off.

Upon getting out of the taxi at the IC, I noticed that there was a capped hypodermic needle right where I was sitting. Really freaky. The taxi driver acted like it was nothing to be concerned about.

Today we went to a pizza/pasta place in the vicinity of the Hilton that we had enjoyed last time. Walking through the plaza there, the little Gypsy boy who had been holding the new year lamb the last time I was there, attached himself like glue to me again. He kept repeating his mantra, "1 Euro, 1 Euro, 1 Euro". I was about 15 meters away from the restaurant when I glanced down, and found the kids hand in my pants pocket!

I yelled at him, and held him his hand at a pressure point. After he was sure I wasn't going to smack him, he just took it like a normal occurance (which I'm sure it is). I let him go, and he took off. Later he walked back by about 10 meters away with a big smirk on his face.

Ah, such fun in Bucharest!

Watch out for the short changer at the Money Exchange window at Gara de Nord. Was given 1.1 Lei per US dollar. After some tense discussions about this, she finally forked over the remaining Lei due us. When traveling on the train, missed our stop because the station was unmarked (station was under construction) and we couldn't get off in time by the time we figured out where we had stopped (train literally started to move as we were trying to get off). The nice onboard agent gave us a special price for going to the next stop (about 85 Lei when it should have been 10 Lei); and then, because of a break in schedule, it took us 4 hours to go back a single stop to our destination.

On the other hand, we found a great Taxi driver at the departures in OTP; he took us to Bucharest and back for 10 Euros each way which, after our initial negotiation period, he seemed quite satisfied with. Very nice gentleman.

The Intercontinental was nice except the air conditioning worked poorly in the room, could barely keep the temperature at about 80 to 85 F or so. Also, nothing there was anywhere near worth the cost; for example, a single cup of tea cost $18 US.

A few observations about OTP/IC/Taxis
 

Well, I'm at AMS now, on the tail end of my YVR-ARN-OTP trip. I survived, even with the nonsense with Taxis and thieving kids.

I took the bus from the airport for 5 RON a ticket (had to buy RT ones, so 5 x 2). Traveling with 3 people, this doesn't always work out so well, but still much cheaper than a taxi. It took 43 minutes from the airport to the the Intercontinental. This was on a Wednesday afternoon. The construction traffic seemed much better than last time.

Going back, I had the IC call a metered taxi. They charged 1.2 lei for in-town, and 2.4 once you go outside town (a bit past the Ikea). 32 RON total. No problem.

In general, I had a so-so experience with taxis. A few charged too much during the day, other were fine.

I had a good experience at Gare de Nord train station. A lady in line helped me out with the ticket to Sinaia, and when I was short on RON (they didn't take credit cards), they held the tickets while I found an ATM. This was a Rapid train, 2nd class, seats were assigned. When we got on the train later, we found people sitting in our seats, but they begrudgingly moved.

It was a nice day trip, and it's certainly nice to get outside of BUH.

The IC was good in general. We got a nice corner room, with a wrap around balcony. The king bed was big, but the quality was not there. My back ached every day for the first 30 minutes.

They have the fitness center/pool/sauna on the top level which is nice. There were only a handful of people up there while I was there.

The prices quoted for internet were quite high. I had to find an internet cafe up the street (1 km) to check email and such. I mainly used taxis and the metro and found them pretty easy to use.

We ate at KFC once, and only once while we were there. Pretty untasty breading on the chicken, and be ready to cough up 75 cents for a nasty little container of ketchup that wouldn't be acceptable to any North American's taste buds.

MRP Alert was came in early this morning, so I got to meet him as I was checking out at 4am this morning.

Lounge was unattended at 2pm today, so this IC Gold took advantage of the free warm non-alcoholic beverages and made a cup of hot tea for free. Everything else in the hotel is overpriced.

Another tip is to pick up the local casino magazine before visiting the casino in the basement of the IC. There is a match play coupon in there ^

Directly behind the hotel, there is a lovely bakery/restaurant that Yaatri and I sampled last trip. As it was Sunday, the bakery was cloed, but the cafe next door was open. Large garden salad + good sized sandwich + soda = 20 lei. If you are looking for a late night snack, walk from the IC 5-6 blocks north to the same plaza as McDonalds. It is right before the next subway station. Next door to McDonalds is a lovely quick serve Italian style restaurant. Food is affordable and quality is ^

My YVR-AMS went out completely full in Y and with 1 open seat missing in C. I briefly consdered upgrading, but was advised at ticketing that the open J seat had broken IFE and no discount was to be given. Bulkhead row 8 worked perfectly instead. It was nice to serve as Jamito's wake up call at 3:30 am after arriving a weebit late due to turbulence and headwinds. After sleeping until 1pm, I checked out the IKEA and the mall near the airport and ate Sweedish Meatballs ^. After walking 5 km or so from IKEA, I got tired and hopped a cab for a 10 lei ride to OTP which was 4km away.

I booked a LY (El-Al) award ticket to TLV. To the left of the main security que, LY had its own screening center for checked and carry-on baggage. As usual, LY security could not understand why an American traveled through Canada, Amsterdam, and Romania to get to Isreal - this was the same experience I had in Cyprus. After I explained in Hebrew that my ticket was $200 r/t, they asked me for a ticket and let me through. This was not the time to mention FlyerTalk ;) Our inbound was 30 minutes late, so it was not until scheduled departure time that the LY security agents completed cordoning off the gate and conducting secondary interviews. While we left over an hour late, we made it to TLV only 20 minutes late and Immigration was empty at 1am :)

Arriving in TLV, I took the train to Tel Aviv Central Station and introduced my seatmate to FlyerTalk. He was an extremely personable Israeli Arab and happily took down Randy's book website and flyertalk.com

Back to OTP Sunday night - will try to get the lounge folks to let me in with my NWA Platinum Card at 1am for the 6am OTP-AMS flight.