Not a semblance to McD’s




Very nice indeed.

The lounge food looks quite decent to me.

Lounge food is decent, certainly didn’t mean to give any other impression.

Breakfast is very good, especially with the A La Carte egg options. I’m not a huge eater of breakfast but appreciate that the option exists.

From 11am to 6pm there is warmed nuts and soft drinks.

6pm to 8pm is the evening buffet which is normally a meat dish, a fish dish, and veg. I am a full on carnivore as you may have guessed by my meal choices, you’ve yet to see a salad grace my table. My Romanian friend commented that not only I, but the entire English race, are carb obsessed which is a damning comment coming from a Romanian who believes pork is the best vegetable! He is also right

The evening food is a poor shadow of the breakfast, and probably purposefully in an establishment with this many on site food options.

The drinks are available a very generous 5pm to 10pm lounge close and are bottom shelf spirits and mostly local beer and wine and I’m more than happy with that, I always choose local beer and wine.

The coffee is nespresso and I am truly delighted by that, having unlimited decent coffee on tap 16 hours of the day.

On a trip like this, late in Friday, early out Sunday, the lounge is not good value just as a lounge as you basically pay double. I still pay for it for the utility and the coffee but mostly because the lounge access only comes on the exec room which means that with my Radisson status it almost guarantees an upgrade to a junior suite or better.

I think when I once did the math breakfast included in room rate is around the 35 euro mark per night and the lounge is around the 70 euro mark. If you are a couple or a family the math changes radically.

The dentist is done and it was a partial success, the entire top jaw work is completed and looks great. My dentist said I looked beautiful! I recommended an immediate drugs test and breathalyser . All joking aside they look great. She vacillated about whether to change them for the final fit and in the end the final set have been lengthened compared to all the previous ones and it worked a treat.

Not so much luck on the molars, all the implants were too short, so they’ve all gone back for a rebuild and it’ll be back in the chair next Saturday at 10am.

Crowns were mostly successful with one recalcitrant one. So I am pretty much where I was this morning however. All the teeth have been switched to the final versions. One week to go - maybe!

Total time at the dentist including getting there and back was five and a half hours and I am just back at the hotel and lounging at the outside bar with an Ursus. I’m not allowed to eat for a few hours so happy to content myself with liquid bread

I need to be out of the hotel at 05:30 so even though the dentist visit wasn’t as long as I expected I will be sticking to the plan and either eating in the lounge or, if that doesn’t inspire me, then back to one of the on site restaurants. Ginger is the obvious choice given the superb meal last time but then again that risks disappointment…. Any opinions?

For now I am going to enjoy this lovely warm day and this lovely cold beer before relocating myself at around five o’clock.

Lounge buffet is out and the die is cast, it’s Ginger again. The blue cheese amuse bouche were very very pungent, and I like blue cheese. The chicken in tomato and herbs was tough even with my new bionic teeth, and the starch was absent once more

The ‘starter’ has arrived and I think I may be in trouble! Sashimi, Sushi and California roll with red tuna, salmon, and sea bass.




That is a mighty board full but I feel I’m up to the challenge

Houston we have a minor problem! Turns out that I have lost my ability to bite sharply, an unpleasant surprise when I mangled the first California roll! messaged my Consulting dentist who thinks it is related to the lengthening of the upper teeth and easily sorted, fingers crossed!

Edit: despite the biting issues the whole board was excellent. I had to fallback on knife and fork for some of the sashimi but the sea bass was like butter.

main course was the beef noodles I swerved away from last week (Gyu Yaki Noodle) and we’re excellent





and for desert it is the ‘Dome Imperatrice’ which sounds… errr… interesting!




This was billed as a mango and passion fruit mousse and was frankly very disappointing being stodgy and having no passion fruit flavour evident. The dome of stodgy is served sitting on a sliver of Victoria sponge or similar and with a smear of vanilla cream that is actually very tasty! This dish lets the side down against what has been an excellent array of food over the past two visits.

Time for the bill and then off to the lounge for a coffee and nightcap before it is time to pack my bags and prepare for the early morning departure.

at least there is an extra hour in bed





see you all at silly o’clock!

And silly o’clock it is! I woke up at just after 3am and thought to myself ‘OK, well at least I got the extra hour’. Nope. 3:59 came and went only to be replaced with 3am again Radisson, nice try but no cigar on the time change notification. Then again I guess not many guests will actually be awake at this time.

In much happier news I also awoke to find a PM from a fellow flyertalk member who is going to be in T5 at the same time that I’ll be there so unless things go awry we’ll be meeting up later today. I’ll probably be a zombie by then as it’s only now 2am UK time. A couple of months back I tried to arrange a different meet up via the travel meetup thread but that didn't work out as when we looked at exact schedules we were in the airport at the same time but literally missing by minutes, one arriving, one departing.

Time for coffee, many coffees! Car arrives at 5:30, 6am at the airport, 7:40 departure, so a bit of time to burn.

Car arrived early and driver was definitely on a mission and we were at the airport at 5:35! BA check in only opens 2 hours before the flight and the queues were unusually long with 14 people in the Club queue where normally I might see one or two. As I’m HBO I decided to skip the checkin and the paper lounge invite and try my luck with just my boarding pass.

Into the pit of madness that is Otopeni security screening and passport control! This is such a complete free for all that you have to keep your sense of humour at the craziness with people jostling and dodging all over the place. I wish photography was allowed, it has to be seen to be believed.

I did find a naughty short cut. Once through security next stop is passport control and there is a completely empty lane to the right for crew and it is also labelled (unclearly) EU biometric passports which I thought I would try my luck with. No such luck and passport duly rejected I was directed to manual check which was right in front of me. This cut at least 15-20 minutes off the queueing wait time! Even with that dodge it was still a full forty minutes to get airside. Coming through here always reminds me how lucky I am to have Newcastle regional airport.

Up to the lounge and phone boarding pass worked a treat. Food and drink offerings are the same day and night with the same gnarly sandwiches and multiple bowls of crisps guarded by the lounge dragons. There was a guest appearance by a tray of mini croissants but I think I’ll settle for a coffee or three.

Out of the window I can see this fine looking tin can which I am guessing is my ride home this morning so it will be a very short stroll to the gate.

Great TR - maybe we should start a Guildford FT meet up!

Boarding started pretty early and everyone was onboard with a good ten minutes to spare but there seemed to be some sort of paperwork snarl up and by the time that was cleared up we were around ten minutes late pushing back. Flightly popped up an alert saying 21 minutes early so looks like we’d earn those ten minutes back whilst in the air, and then some.



I had ordered a special meal as I often do, this morning the Kosher as I think it’s the best cooked breakfast going. For the first time ever I was handed the entire package to open. Told them it’s fine, I’d ordered it purely on the grounds of variety.



A few minute later we were in the air after a very very bumpy taxi out to the western runway. The crew had been busy all the while we were on the ground and so meal service commenced really quickly. Again I was handed my special meal still sealed. I don’t mind that as it means I can see the menu stickers.





I realised long ago that the Kosher meals were generally more filling, and I’ve put that down to the food tray being packed full. This morning I noticed that the ceramic meal tray is actually about an inch larger in both length and width than the standard ones which is a lot of extra space on a small tray like these.





The meal was good as always, a solid hockey puck of ‘scrambled egg’ with a couple of pieces of smoked salmon on top, all sitting on a large mushroom. This is accompanied by bubble and squeak and more mushrooms.

The bread plate was a croissant and a very tasty cinnamon roll. The standard morning trinity of drinks to wash it all down with.



The regular menu was the full English or the mushroom omelette.





Service was friendly and the crew were all cleared and buttoned up behind the curtain within 80 minutes.


Shortly after this there was obviously some sort of medical issue on board. Crew making lots of visits to the flight deck, people backwards and forwards with masks, gloves, and forms, and one of the crew with a splash of blood on her leg. Whatever it was clearly and rightly it took the attention of the cabin crew for the remainder of the flight.


Landed a few minutes early and we are taxiing over to the terminal as I post this.


Next up, the joy of T3 to T5 transit once more.


Edit: we are all being held in our seats to let the paramedics get through to the Ill patient and the ambulance has just drawn up.

Well that was trip of two halves. The unwell passenger was in row 9 immediately behind the curtain so the ambulance chap decided to offload rows 1-8, I assume so they didn’t have to stretcher the poor unfortunate through 8 rows of gawkers. This meant there was a club europe dedicated bus through to the terminal. Thereafter the transit bus was ready and waiting, and everything ran smoothly until…. Security!

The queue I was in was rejecting almost every single bag. The reject queue was totally full and a second officer was cherry picking trays to handle separately. Eventually got to my two trays that had been rejected and I asked the guy whether there was an alert or some such as I’d never seen this level of secondary screening, ‘yeah, alert for the new guy’ was the laconic reply

Finally made it to the first class lounge and a well deserved refreshment

As I skipped the lounge on the first return from Bucharest here are a couple of very poor photos of the general lounge area. With its low ceilings I find the main lounge to be very dark and much prefer to sit out here




Even on a dark and dreary rainy day it is still light and airy, as opposed to the main part of the lounge





The buffet is laid out for breakfast which is the standard full English offering with lip service paid to a continental breakfast











The pancakes were surprisingly good for being out under the warmer, possibly they were fresh

As I was almost falling asleep in the lounge I decided to take a little stroll around the terminal. Headed towards gates 18-23 initially and came across this




How could I resist? A twenty minute manicure later I have lovely tidy shiny nails all tidied up by and equally lovely and personable young lady. A pleasant chat whilst she diligently tamed my claws. Whist I was there someone else was getting a head massage, that may well be one for a future visit!

Nothing of great interest at duty free and so back to the lounge where lunch had been laid out side by side with breakfast.









Nothing tempting me right now so a cup of coffee and a seat by the windows and time to watch the airport in operation