That meal looks alright.

There's a pretty strong jetstream these days passing from UK towards east to southeast, I can imagine it taking a good bit of time of on a 3 hour flight.

All checked in and Radisson did me proud once more. Upgraded to a junior suite, more than I need for the next 6 days.








Great pool view but looking at the forecast after tomorrow the weather is on the change. That also means I need to rethink my plans as Tuesday was going to involve a fair bit of walking, may move that to tomorrow, that is a problem for breakfast time.





Last stop of the night is the eighth floor executive lounge.








I’ve missed the food but I’ve had more than enough today! A couple of local beers and a few warm nuts will do me fine and then it will be off to bed after a pretty marathon day.




And with that it is time to sign off for the night, enjoy these beers and then off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll do a wander around the hotel at some point, it has some fantastic services and restaurants around the premises, and is absolutely huge.

I've been very happy with Radisson recently.

I'm so happy that at least day 1 went without a hitch, and you got some decent lounge food. I bought my neighbour a bottle of Hennessy XO earlier in the year. He had never had an expensive bottle of cognac before, and once he got over his initial shock of not needing to put Coke in it, we've had a couple of pleasant nights sipping. Pedant note, there is no U in Qantas. Looking forward to the rest.

As a fellow pedant I must admit to feeling it was wrong as I typed it and, being equal part idler, too lazy to check it

Glad to hear you have converted another to the fellowship of the cognac

After what has been a ridiculously long nights sleep for me, well over ten hours, it is 10 am in a bright and beautiful Bucharest.



The first order of the day is Coffee! The business lounge has some very nice pod coffee machines and a shower can wait. Breakfast buffet is part of the Lounge package and this morning is a fairly typical offering.







There is also a small al la carte offering



The weather forecast is looking a lot more forgiving than it was yesterday so I might not need to reschedule my itinerary, will look at it once caffeine levels are returned to normal

The lounge has turned into Fawlty Towers, never seen anything quit like it, staying out of fascination of what comes next. Firstly, eggs Benedict, McDonalds style




This was rapidly followed by a group with a baby who are currently having a full volume nursery song contest in one corner. Next came the whisperer who was talking so quietly the lounge attendant couldn’t hear him, let alone understand him, especially with the infantile song background chorus.

No sooner had the attendant gone off to place Mr Quiet’s order than Mr Angry arrived at the buffet station and instantly started kicking off about anything and everything. No salad.. which appeared in seconds as it had obviously just been removed to be refilled… dirty table.. there were many clean ones… and so on. Much muttering and grumbling.

A few seconds later he is banging on the service door and when the chef appeared, berated him for having to wait 15 minutes to talk to someone… I’d like to think he confused seconds and minutes.. but I think he is just an ...! Latest complaint ‘you need to bring more water’, there are still 6 bottles on the counter!

Free sideshow with breakfast

Just seen loads of people running along the road, Google tells me that it’s the Bucharest marathon this weekend.

One of my Romanian colleagues often complains of jet lag after the two hour shift from Romanian to UK time, which generally results in my mocking him unmercifully . Normally I’m up at 5-6am so having slept for so long last night, and with the time differential, this morning I am feeling completely out of synch with the day. It feels like it should be 7am when in fact the morning is almost gone. As he is reading this trip report let me categorically state that it is not jet lag, it is bed lag

Time for that deferred shower and then onwards and outwards for a purposeful wander around the city.

As you may have guessed if you�ve seen my previous reports, if I have only a short time in a location I like to use structured tourism to maximise that time. As I have spent so much time in Bucharest recently I�ve taken most of the tours and now it is the much more unpredictable method of tourism by wandering around. This normally involves me following my nose into areas I have not visited before with very mixed results. It also means that the routes taken can be highly bizarre to an outside observer with many twists and turns, backtracking, and walking in circles, which is exactly what has happened today. After a two hour strollI found myself a few meters from the Radisson which was all the excuse I needed to stop off for a beer.





One of the things that never fails to strike me in Bucharest centre is the juxtaposition between the older architecture and the more brutalist buildings from the recent past.







And a small flavour of other parts of this lovely city

I am also a fan of street art and the route I took wasn�t particularly prolific, there was a lot of graphic art and tagging and an enormous amount of stickering.

The last two weeks of running around and burning the candle at both ends have obviously had an effect, no sooner had I returned to the room and sat on the bed than I was asleep for another near 3 hours!

Just tackled the clothes pressing with this bizarre Heath Robinson built in contraption of combination iron, mini-board, trouser press, and storage all attached with a rail and rod system.




Product testing was clearly performed by a small child as the mini ironing board is completely unsuited to pressing mens shirts. 3 just about pressed shirts later, packed it away again which was nowhere near as easy as you might expect!

The afternoon is gone, the sun is low, and the lounge has far better coffee than the room, so it is time to head up there and see what the evening food options are before deciding whether to partake or try out one of the four on site restaurants.

My Romanian friend was commenting on the lack of anything fizzy today, a situation that I am happy to correct




And this is the drinks section fully stocked, unlike last nights end of night photo. Drinks service runs for a very generous 5 hours, 5pm to close of lounge at 10 pm. If it has not changed I expect food will be 6pm to 8pm.

Food arrived spot on time and is, frankly, a little bizarre. On previous visits it’s never been extensive, but it has at least been cohesive, unlike this triumvirate with no independant starch.




I tried a couple of pieces of the beef which were barely luke walm, albeit tender and tasty. An odd and disappointing spread, especially when you contrast and compare against breakfast.



However this does present the opportunity to go try out one of the restaurants. I’d love to try the sushi restaurant but according to the web it is closed on a Sunday so I think it is time for a gentle stroll across the pool area to the Mediterranean restaurant.

Ah. I had an experience with the same contraption in Bratislava earlier this year (I think it was). Not helped by the fact that it managed to detach itself from the closet it was in... and ended up not working anyway. The solution, at the end of the day, was laughably simple - a quick call to the reception, and a proper full size ironing board with a working steam iron showed up in minutes.

re. Bucharest, can't help myself but the city does nothing for me. I like a lot of the smaller regional cities in Romania, but Bucharest... it's just a failed experiment and I simply can't.

I�ve decided on a slightly different approach, I�ve ironed enough for half the week and then in a couple of days will invoke the dry cleaning service for that perfectly creased trouser look