Paris to Bucharest

The day started well with the taxi being on time to take us t the Airport at 6 am for our flight to Bucharest,via Heathrow.  Once at the Airport, confusion reigned!  There were no “races” to line up in to get checked in, and there was a crowd of school kid, and others, in front of us. For the most part, there was only one person checking people in, so it was a very slow process…took us ¾ hour to get our turn. Now, if you think it’s just at the Supermarket checkout that hold ups occur, you’re wrong. As we were about to get our turn, the shift changed. Not only did the new people have to register in and have a chat, they also had to change the roll for the luggage tags. We finally got through, went through immigration and security. The fellow at the security bagged our liquids for us and said you’re fine, so, on we go.

 When we got to Heathrow we were told to follow the purple line.  Only problem was, there was no purple line. We were also told that people would be there when we got off the plane to tell us where to go for travelling on…no one there. We had been told in Paris that we would not need to leave the terminal to get our flight.  After walking around for about 15 minutes, we came across a fellow who told us we needed to go down and catch a shuttle/train to the main Hall, and we’d find out where we had to go over there.  Once there we found the line to go through immigration and security was about 1 km long. We managed to get through there in about another 1 hour and then it was on to security. Here we managed to strike a young fellow who was quite rude. He chatted me up and told me I hadn’t bagged all my liquids. I explained that I had assumed that as the fellow in Paris had done it, that the rest of my stuff was fine. “You’re in England now” he said. He proceeded to slowly take every single thing out of my bag, one by one, then took the bag away and x-rayed it twice and drug tested it. I had to unwrap every single package. When we asked if we could finally re pack the bag as our flight was due soon. He went and got his supervisor and she gave us a lecture on British Security procedures. We said we didn’t mind the bag being searched but that his attitude was rude. We explained what had really transpired and with that, the fellow just left. She was amazed and said she couldn’t resolve the problem now as he had left. We just said, let us pack our bag and go catch our flight, please.  She did, and we did manage to catch the flight with about 10 minutes to spare. I can tell you, we’re not looking forward to having to go through Heathrow again when we fly home. I know it is a BIG airport, but they are so disorganised. After you find out which gate to go to for your flight you have very little time to get there. The flight info is only given about 50 minutes before it leaves. Maybe we’re spoilt in Oz but we know a couple of hours before the flight leaves.

On reaching Bucharest and retrieving our bags, we found a fellow waiting to take us to our Hotel.  What a relief that was after the Heathrow saga.  Our Hotel is nice and there are a couple of very nice Historical and attractive buildings around where we are. Tomorrow we will start exploring the City more. We have to get some local money first up and that will take a bit of working out, comparing that to our money or the Euro. Interesting.  We are looking forward to seeing this place.