July 24 - Flight to Bucharest Romania

Today we had a leisurely breakfast and finished packing.  We had some time before our flight so we worked on some pictures.

The shuttle took us to Heathrow Terminal 4.  Among other things they had a very interesting ceiling (Mary seems to always notice the ceilings...perhaps because she has to look so far up to see anything).

We discovered large luggage scales at the terminal so spent some time weighing luggage and shuffling items around to get the weight of both checked bags down to just under the limit. 

We checked in and then had lunch before going through security.  Mary got snagged twice, once when she set of the alarm (new shoes…last time she wears them when going through security) and again when they wanted to go through everything in her luggage.  Apparently the piece was packed so tight with things like camera gear and binoculars, etc. that they couldn’t sort things out their scans. 

The rest of the day and the flight were uneventful.  Our luggage all showed up fairly promptly and we had a driver waiting for us just outside luggage claim.  She gave us a running commentary of some of the buildings we were driving by as we headed to the hotel. 

Hotel Volo, our new home for the next few days.

Unfortunately we discovered that while Romania is a part of the European Union they have not yet converted to the Euro.  They are still on the Leu and we don’t have any.  It will be a scramble tomorrow to figure out how to get some currency so that we can pay entrance fees at some of the sights on our tour.

The hotel is nothing fancy but it will do.  We had a decent meal on the plane and since we didn’t get to the hotel until about 9:00 Romanian time we just had a granola bar in the room for dinner.  Quite a come down from David’s awesome cooking on the Wessex Rose.