Wizzair A321
Finally Mrs 737 decided that we should visit her family in Romania: it has only taken me 16 years to convince her that I wanted to visit the place of her birth, which is in the north of the country close to the Moldovan and Ukranian borders. It's a small town with around 40K population by the name of Campulung Moldovenesc.

Options for travel are few: we could travel to Heathrow and fly with BA or Tarom to Bucurest and ,hang about for 8 or 9 hours for an internal flight to Suceava which is the closest airport being some 65kms from Campulung. Alternatively we could take the train but that journey takes between 8 and 10 hours and some trains require a change in Iasi. A complete non starter was renting a car and driving: it's about 12 hours by road and the standard of the roads isn't great.

The best option was to take a direct flight to Suceava and the only carrier was Wizzair with the closest departuure point being London Luton. So much for being a low cost carrier, the cost of the flights ran to a shade under �500 for both of us. The booking process, via the Wizz website was tortuous: unlike Ryanair's website where you can book with 5 clicks and some form filling, the Wizz site is overcomplicated and booking is a lengthy process.

We live around 4 miles from the M1 motorway and Luton Airport is also around 4 miles from the motorway so, roadworks and traffic apart, the 92 mile trip should'nt be too painful especially with an afternoon departure. One issue is the 26 miles of roadworks on the southbound side: they have been working on a particular stretch of road for what must be 20+ years. Hardly surprising as there never seems to be anyone at work.

I had pre booked parking for 5 days in Terminal 2 car parking : finding it was painless as the route is well sign posted. From the car park it's a short walk to the terminal, maybe 5 minutes.

Covered parking at T2

Lifts from Level 3 to ground level.

Terminal building
The last time I used Luton was to travel to Amsterdam for a simulator session close on 20 years ago and I was not impressed with the faciliities. The terminal has been significantly improved and Wizzair has several check in desks at the far end of departures.

Departures

Wizzair check in area
As you can see the check in area was fairly empty and as we had Wizz Priority we were through the check in in about 7 minutes. We had checked in online but asked for, and were issued, paper boarding cards as Suceava doesn't have the electronics to handle Iphone boarding cards.

The airport has only one lounge: the Aspire Lounge in the departure area which also has a huge selection of shopping outlets for those so minded. There are several bars and restuarants as well although a few weren't open. We had pre-booked the lounge for the princely sum of �18 each: the walk up rate is �23 per person: Priority Pass holders take their chances at busy times as the lounge is quite small.



Lounge food



The selection of food available was limited, soup, 2 hot dishes, 1 was pasta with meatballs, the other some sort of vegetable ragout with rice. Hot suasges were also available along with a small selection of salad and cold cuts with cheese. Oddly enough there was breakfast cereal available even though it was after lunch.

Vegetable soup

Scones and muffins

Food station - all self serve

Scone under construction

Scone deconsructed

Self serve hot drinks

Cold drinks

Selection of fruit juices

Bar - not self serve
The bar had a limited selection of drinks: only 1 white wine was available, no red or rose. There was a single draught beer pump and 3 other types of bottled beer. Coffee and tea was from the machine pictured. The lounge has a time limit of no more than 3 hours per visit and I recall a maximum of 3 drinks per person: champagne and prosecco are available at extra charge.

Boarding was on schedule for a 1555 departure, completed in an orderly fashion with Priority customers boarding first. We had paid for extra legroom setas by the overwing exits and seeing the seat pitch on the regular seats I'm glad we did. There are set at a very tight 30 inches and the 321 Neo, very new and clean aircraft, was almost up to it's 230 capacity.

Overwing exit seat

321 interior
We departed 2 minutes behind schedule due to congestion in the cul de sac but it took another 10 minutes or so before we were airborne with a flight time of 3hrs 5miinutes. The inflight service, Buy on Board as per the LCC SOP, was limited and expensive. The drinks trolley didn't appear until 30 minutes after take off. There is no IFE or Skymap on board so a personal tablet is essential on longer flights.
The seats lacked padding and were really uncomfortable: bringing your own cushion might be an idea!

More to follow.

We landed on scheule and the 2 border police processed the passengers very quickly, our bags were waiting for us and we were through in
no more than 15 minutes.

My brother in law and nephew were there to meet us and within 30 mins we were in the car and en route down the very bumpy local roads.

The following day, Saturday, we headed in to town for some lunch at a restaurant by the name of Bucovina in the centre of town. Although it has pretty reasonale reviews on TripAdvisor I wasn't overly impressed.

I ordered ribs which were overcooked and dry. My wife went for mici, pronounced meech, a traditional Romanian kebab which she enjoyed.

Pickled veg side

Bucovina interior

Overdone ribs
Our Sunday outing took us up into the mountains to dine at a restuarant called Mestecanis where we had the best meal of our trip.


Local bread

Potato and stroganoff

Soup

Burger

Cabbage salad

Interior

Exterior with mountain view

Snow on the ground

Colourful cocktail

Potato dessert

Owner Bogdan in the middle
I went for ribs again: this time they were moist, beautfiully cooked and so tasty. Bogdan recommended 2 local beers for me to try: I preferred the Suceava.

Dessert for my mother in law was potato cakes served with sour cream and another dip. Very unusual but apparently traditional.. All in all the food was excellent and the service outstanding.

Next day's lunch was at a more local establishment, The Bierhof.

Ribs again

Interior
The food was just OK; maybe dry ribs are popular !


Our Uber on it's way
Our final meal out was again the centre of town, opposite the Sir John pub, a place called Q'uisine. Again it has very good TripAdvisor reviews and my wife believed it was owned by a friend of hers from High School. As it transpired she had sold it and agaiin the food was disappointing. My wife had chicken schnitzel which was dry and reported as being not really tasty: she left most of it. I elected to have a salad and the meat platter whivh included pork fillet, duck breast and steak. I think they had the BBQ on high that day:as my rare steak was done medium well, the pork could have been used as a frisbee it was so dry and overcooked and as for the duck breast.........................the cook abviously didn''t like the duck as it was cremated.
At least the bruschetta starter and cheese plate were edible.

Cheese plate

Bruschetta

Guinness
So with our short trip coming to an end it was back to Suceava for our flight home.

Terminal building

Check in

Ramp from smoking area
Check in was painless and wwe were through to the very small deparure area in minutes. Airside there is a small duty free shop and a little cafe.

Flight left on time with a 3hr 10 flight time. Unfortunately we were above cloud all of the way so not a lot to see.

Arrived on schedule at Luton and then the fun started!
.
It took 90 miutes to get through the UK border as only 4 desks were operating. The queues were horrendous; wife and I finally got to the head of the line and were directed to the e-passport gates. Wife with Romanain passport sailed through - not me however. I was rejected and had to join yet another line to have my passport manually processed. Talk about a shambles.

Bags collected, out to car park to liberate the car.; pre paid parking remember.

After several lapsaround the car park following exit signs we finally reachedd the barrier and followed the instructions on our parking ticket. Insert into machine and await the barrier opening, except the machine wanted �337.50 in parking charges. After 10 minutes calling for assistance the parking geezer finally answered. Dig through the phone for the confirmaory email, give him the refernce, and we were finally free 2 hrs after we arrived.

Interesting TR. I must confess that it doesn't make me want to visit Romania...

The business with getting out of the car park when you arrived back is typical. It's a crude attempt to milk unsuspecting people, or those desperate to get home after an exhausting flight. Someone should revoke their operating licence until they learn better.

1P, despite the poor food the trip was wonderful. Don't let my opinions put you off visiting: I can't wait to go back. Probably this summer for a few days. Fabulous country especially if you go to the mountains.