And now for something completely different, not!

The time has come for me to return to the dentist chair for a slightly overdue checkup. This weekend wasn’t originally planned to be a trip to the dentist, but unfortunately my consultant has left the practice and therefore the originally arranged visit has had to be rescheduled to fit into this trip. To make this work, the dental visit will be on Monday morning with my consulting surgeon.

I have done almost no planning for this weekend, however I have visited Bucharest so many times now that there’s not much left in the city for me to see or do that I haven’t already seen or done. I was looking at the possibility of going to visit a different town or city on Sunday but I’ve decided that a much better plan will be to explore the plethora of microbreweries within the city

The plan of the weekend (times are local time):

Saturday

10am NCL-LHR
Noon T3 Lounge rampage
6pm LHR-OTP, arriving midnight

Sunday

Much food and Beer, the grand Bucharest brewery crawl. Hmmm, maybe that should have been the thread title!

Monday

10am Dentist
3pm OTP-LHR
6pm Concorde Room
8pm LHR-NCL

Yes, as dull as dishwater! Actually, so dull that now I’ve written that down I’ve no idea why I’m bothering with a trip report. Lets call it my gift to insomniacs

Previous Trip Reports

2024

Oct - A very short weekend trip to Kuwait flying all 4 classes

Sep - San Jose CA and 15 flights in J and F, a 1,000 tier point run on BA/AA/AS/IB
Sep - The Edinburgh FT Do

Aug - Seven Flights to Stretch SAS Status
Aug - More Lounging Around - The Ultimate Lounge Safari Take 2
Aug - 24 Hours in Tirana: Another Day of Sights and Speedy Shenanigans!
Aug - A double LCC weekend jaunt to Malaga
Aug - 24 Hours in Graz: A Day of Sights and Speedy Shenanigans!

July - The Flyertalk Bristol Do
July - Hasty Valencia Visit: Tapas, Vermut, and the Joy of Impulse Adventures
July - A Frequent Flyer’s Frivolous Foodie Foray

June - Lounging around in London Heathrow: The ultimate BA T3 and T5 lounge safari
June - Santorini Sprint: 24 Hours of Sun, Sand, and Speedy Sightseeing
June - Red Tape and Red Buses: When paperwork takes flight
June - Toronto: Towering Heights, Delicious Bites, and Niagara Delights!
June - Preveza for points: An overnight adventure with JapesGPT

May - Flying High, Haggling Low: A BA holiday to Marrakesh
May - Spontaneous Sicilian Splendour. Palermo in a day

Apr - Sky High Shenanigans: 6 Days, 5 Destinations, and a Whole Lot of Boarding Passes!

Mar - Four days in Baku, an Azerbaijan adventure
Mar - BA Holidays 6 day tier point run
Mar - A.I. goes to Aberdeen

Feb - A trip to two continents - Istanbul
Feb - Back to Bucharest for a toothy treat

Jan - Going for gold in Malaga
Jan - A Milan day trip

2023

Dec - A Christmas Escapade, Washington and my first first
Dec - A Stockholm weekend
Dec - Brussels, no sprouts! A short hop for hops.
Dec - A LCC trip to Faro, curiosity and comparison

Nov - Gdansk and Wroclaw for beer and XP

Oct - Bucharest and Back - again, and again, and again
Oct - A Short Sibiu Sojourn

Sept - Birmingham, Business, and Balti
Sept - A Budapest Long Weekend
Sept - Krakow Kraziness

I’ve got a two night stag do in Bucharest in March. The best man is about useless as chocolate trousers, so I will follow with interest for some ideas I can claim as my own send him

I appreciate you starting this on a Friday. I can now better plan my coffee time the next couple of mornings! 🤣

Good morning from a damp and dreary start to the day here at Newcastle airport.

The traditional shot of the BA queue which is longer than I would expect given it is only 90 minutes to departure



Bragging rights in full swing, there is �best airport in the world� on pretty much every screen As you can see above, they�re not being subtle about it, that is a seriously gaudy background.

The airport is looking a bit ratty this morning with multiple equipment failures.


One of the two lifts

Up escalator on the right hand half of arrivals to departures

Down escalator on the left hand half of arrivals to departures

On the bright side there was absolutely nobody in fast track and decanting my iPad from the bag meant no secondary for the first time in a very long time.

First stop: Aster and Thyme for the Priority Pass glass of bubbles to start off the day.

Having enjoyed the glass of fizz in Aster and Thyme it was time to head to the Aspire lounge, and no surprise for anyone here





When I returned to the table with my sausage bounty KARFA was there and waiting

During our conversation he mentioned that he was no fan of the mini stotties as they fell apart. I said that had never been an issue for me and I’m sure you know what comes next! The stottie self destructed into a crumbly bready mess! He jinxed me

By the time I reached gate A10 boarding was in full swing. Looking across from the plane A3 is still cordoned off.



G-EUOE is our plane for today and another new one for me.





Sat atop 1B to avoid the boarding battering and menus have been distributed




I�m very disappointed to find that we are outside breakfast time and so no delicious kosher bun for me.

Flew into Newcastle last night and I think we were on gate 7; never seen this before, what’s going on?

Should you stay longer than a day in OTP, I would recommend day travel to Brasov to see Dracula's castle....

The pilots announcement that we would be on our way shortly as there were a couple of bags left to load was a tiny white lie as I had just the moment before heard that they needed to offload a bag, presumably due to a missing passenger. It didn’t take them too long to track down the wayward bag and we were on our way and off the ground just 12 minutes late.

The crew were quick off the blocks with service. The IFL had already asked myself and @KARFA, who is in 1A this morning, if it was OK to unwrap our Kosher special meals. He did something I had not seen before, he left the menu label on the tray so we could see what the meal was.






The salt beef with honey mustard dip was very pleasant, the Rhubarb pot returned to the galley untouched, it’s without doubt my least favourite dessert from Hermolis.

All accompanied by the standard trio, of course.

With supposedly thirty minutes to go we had an early pilots announcement that we were ten minutes from starting our descent as we had been slowed down by London. Makes a change from ATC restrictions on departure I guess.

The remainder of the flight passed uneventfully and we were on the ground in Heathrow by 11:30, fifteen minutes after the pilots estimate, and are currently taxiing to the A gates.

Next stop for me is T5 landside and the Photo Booth , as I need to get a headshot for the companies web site, and they want one with me wearing a jacket

Thanks for the tip, I actually visited Bran, Peles, and Brasov on my last visit

Maintenance of some sort. Apparently there was a crane there a few days ago, so possibly they�re nearing completion.

T3 security is a complete disaster today, this is the end of the fast track line!



I�ve never seen anything like it. Staff I have spoken to so far have no idea what is going on or why it�s a complete mess

There are staff scurrying around with trollies loaded with tensa barriers and this the another chunk of standard security queue

All I can think of is that there were a lot of delays and cancellations at Heathrow yesterday as it was thick fog until around 11ish, maybe still suffering from that? Luckily for me, my 1830 NCL wasn’t one of the cancellations and although slightly delayed, wasn’t bad

Somewhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour later and I�ve finally cleared the absolutely steaming hot security area and first stop of the day is The BA first lounge and First Dining





Different invite today, much larger. First time I�ve seen these, up until now it has been small cards. Apparently these are the proper invites that have been out of stock for some time.

The Dining Room is busier than I�ve known it, at least half the tables occupied, so no roaming photos around the space on this visit. I�ll almost certainly be back later.