If the next three weekends go to plan there’ll be a couple more of the iconic Romanian restaurant reviews to come, Hanu Berarilor, Caru cu bere, and maybe Hanu lui Manuc which I’m told is a bit of a tourist trap but so is Caru cu bere yet the food is still decent.

For the specials my personal recommendations are the Muslim, Hindu, and Kosher, and stay well away from the low fat/salt/calorie options… fat and salt are all that give some of the standard meals their flavours :D

Being even more pedantic, it's actually an acronym. QANTAS, Queensland And Northern Territories Air Service. :D

Great trip report, btw. :)

Thanks, glad you're enjoying the report and all pedants welcome with open arms :)

To be even more pedantic :D - I have seen some style guides which suggest acronyms that can be 'spoken' should be written with an initial capital, while those which have to be spelt out should be all capitals.

But I have seen breaches of this in IT, e.g. NTFS and FAT filesystems (not getting in to GIF)...

Perhaps, but QANTAS is a a trademarked logo being all caps.

Then again their FB page is 'Qantas'.....

Seconds away, round 2! Here we go again, back to Bucharest and the dentists.


Today is a slight departure for me, these are reward flights for this weekend and the outbound pair are going to be in Euro Traveller rather than Club Europe. I only booked these three additional weekends about six weeks ago and for some reason the 27th and 29th were incredibly expensive, approximately £1,300 as I recall, so it was time to roll out the Avios. There was no business reward availability on the outbound and hence it is off to the back of the bus. I’ve reserved exit row seats for both flights so unless the business cabin expands dramatically I’ll still have plenty of leg room.

It’s also a good excuse to try out the highlife cafe and so I’ve pre-ordered for the NCL-LHR leg due to the shortness of the flight but I’m leaving it to chance on the LHR-OTP leg on the minuscule possibility of an operational upgrade or a decent priced Airport Upgrade :) If no upgrades forthcoming then maybe it’s time for something a little different.

These three weekends are going to be much the same yet also each somewhat different to the other.

Weekend 1: This weekend is the simplest, almost entirely a flight, restaurant, and lounge review weekend. My standard NCL-LHR-OTP flights with no reschedules or cancellations so far. A planned arrival at the hotel 4pm or later this afternoon and then dinner at Hanu Berarilor. Saturday is a guaranteed long day in the dentist chair then probably hotel business lounge or hotel restaurant for dinner in the evening, depart early Sunday OTP-LHR-NCL.

Weekend 2: Early rescheduled departure from Newcastle due to cancellation and, because of this, a 10 hour! transit in LHR. Working from the lounge for a few hours and then planning a lounge safari for the second half of the day, probably mostly in the business lounges as I did a first class lounge tour on the last trip. Arrival at the hotel should be close to midnight. Saturday is expected to be some, currently unknown, amount of time in the dentist chair, and then out for a meal at the iconic caru cu bere in the evening. Early departure Sunday but travelling back OTP-LHR/LCY-EDI then LNER to NCL. This will be my first time ever in LCY and on City Flyer so looking forward to that.

Weekend 3: Thursday night LNER NCL-EDI and hotel in Edinburgh. Early Friday afternoon departure from EDI to LHR which will be another first for me as my previous planned flight from EDI was during the recent NATS failure so I took advantage of LNERs generosity and jumped on the train instead. A short connection onwards to OTP, late arrival at the hotel. Saturday is reserved for dentist just in case, but if not needed then this is the day I’ll go to Bran and Peles castles. If I am needed in the chair then I’ll book dinner in the other iconic Bucharest eatery, Hanu lui Manuc. Early departure Sunday, 5 hour LHR layover due to another reschedule so almost certainly another first class lounge safari, and finally back to NCL

The messing around in Edinburgh is because weekends 2 and 3 are booked as one BA holiday to get an additional 480 Tier Points.

Hand baggage only this weekend, the suitcase appearing to be overkill for two nights but is mostly filled with rain gear, fleece, and a wide array of dental cleaning devices :) Accompanied by what has now become the bag of many tags with thanks to corporate-wage-slave for the subtle flyertalk tag :D


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And with that War and Peace length introduction to weeks 2-4 it’s time to wash the coffee mug and await the taxi to take me to the airport.

After getting out of bed at stupid o’clock I am once more back at Newcastle Airport which, as an aside, recently won airport of the year for airports under 5 million passengers at Routes World Conference. It is a really nice regional airport, even when busy the staff are friendly and cheerful, in my experience the airport is alway clean, and it has a decent range of bars, eateries, and other services. Time from kerb to lounge is generally in the region of 15-20 minutes and boarding is mostly well organised… mostly. If only the lounge was better, and maybe it will be after the Aspire refurb and expansion, we shall see.

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Today was no exception to the speedy clearance, kerb to lounge in under 10 minutes, no real queues anywhere. The building work is still ongoing and last weeks overly sensitive mass scanner has disappeared again and the left hand wall of the security area has moved inwards a few feet.

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I upgraded to the Aspire plus lounge again as the main lounge was pretty busy, and am currently enjoying the obligatory morning trio of fizz, coffee, and orange juice.


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As I recall I only ordered a bacon roll from the highlife cafe to eat onboard so a small english breakfast is the order of the day.

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And with that it is time to sit back, relax, and await the gate notification which I expect will be gate 3 again.

The flight information displays updated and it is Gate 3 as expected and after a very short walk from the lounge I arrived nice and early for once. Red flashing lights and loud beeping signalled all was not well with my boarding pass and a new one was issued for seat 1a - my first ‘at the gate’ upgrade… yippee! The plane was ready and it was straight through and onboard.


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It will be interesting to see how the food and drink plays out as I have items ordered from the speedbird cafe.

Boarding has been really smooth so far, people are flowing onboard at a steady pace and the crew are in good humour, has the makings of a good flight.

In other news, flightly is alerting a 40 minute delay to my second leg onwards to Bucharest and I do not mind in the slightest as I have all day so any delay equals more lounge time.

Very wet this morning so in flight photos are probably not on the cards


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Bucked up, tray table away, seat back in the upright position, and window blind fully up, it’s a boarding complete at 05:48. Time to sit back and enjoy the ride. Next stop LHR T5 and the never to be sufficiently cursed transit to T3.

In the end we were in the air about 10 minutes late but still expected to land on time as the schedule for NCL-LHR is very generous.

Excellent crew today, completely on the ball, had the entire 20 people in business fed, watered, and cleared by the time we reached Birmingham to start our descent. Photos are bit blurry as the lighting was kept low for the duration of the meal, dining in the dusk. The only moment of note was when I was moving my coffee and it kept dripping… took me a tiny while and a wet shirt to realise that the first mug was actually cracked and leaking, hence the half full mug in the photo.

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There was plenty of time for a couple of refills along the way and then we were over london. Not quite the scenic views of last week.


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I do like the pre-dawn flights when there is low cloud, it is almost ethereal with the glow of the clouds from the lighting below.

Landed bang on time, and a short taxi saw us offloading quickly and now it’s time for the joyous transit over to T3

The T3 transit took the average 1 hour exactly from plane to exiting T3 security. Managed to get behind a group at security that apparently had never flown or cleared security before, it was so bad it was funny.

Straight to the BA galleries guest services to check for an airport upgrade but unfortunately none available despite expert flyer showing a seat free in J. Never mind, back of the bus it is 😊

Then straight to the Cathay first class lounge where I managed to snag a pew with a view


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The pantry was laid out for breakfast


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And now with the requisite champagne, coffee, and delicious cheese and ham croissants it is time to kick back for half an hour before wandering off to the gate


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After a gate change alert from expertflyer I just realised that I have been staring out the window at today’s carriage


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A very short stroll to the gate this morning!

First on the bus after the pre-boarding and unsurprisingly no red light and buzz so it’s down past the curtain and into 11c


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Crew and friendly and chatty so has the makings of a fun flight. Boarding is incredibly slow, don’t know why but the queue down the aisle is hardly moving. We are supposedly delayed by 10 minutes but I will be amazed if we are pushing back on time.

Time to wait and see who my neighbours will be for this little trip to Bucharest

Well well well! The captain has been on to announce that we are waiting for one important person to board, his first officer! He reported that the originally scheduled FO had just flown back from Amsterdam and was unable to continue flying! We are now awaiting a replacement FO who is on airport standby, so the delay is going to be close to an hour before we get off the ground.

in much happier news, all the passengers are on board for this almost completely full flight and the seat next to me in the exit row is empty!

Just perusing the highlife cafe menu and it seems smaller than the last one I read, I assume there are different menus for different destinations or flight lengths.

Update: The replacement FO is onboard and we are all buttoned up and rolling to the runway almost exactly 1 hour late. Next stop, Bucharest

Using the onboard wifi today as I needed to get a credit card PIN number for the highlife cafe purchases. All my card numbers are meaningless and different so I remember none of them!

according to flight radar we have just crossed into Austria and not to far from Steyr which caught my eye as I’m hoping to go there next year for a week long Segway event.

in any case, did a little taste test of the highlife menu, all in the interest of science, you understand!


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The sandwich was very very good, thoroughly enjoyed that. The uncommon bubbly rose was not particularly bubbly or rose, I would not order that again

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You cannot go wrong with Joe and Seph’s popcorn, been a fan of theirs since before they were mainstream when I tried (and bought) all of their popcorn flavours at a good food show way way back. Equally hard to beat Freixenet for an easy drinking drop of fizz.

And it has taken me all the way to Vienna to write that little update. Time to enjoy the fizz, and may be another, and it’s roughly an hour to landing.