20240802/03 Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 1-2 - Romania, here we come!

Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 1-2/27 - Off to Romania

And...we're off. Today, we start a 27-day adventure and our first river cruise. We'll sail on the Viking Lofn from Bucharest, Romania to Amsterdam, The Netherlands along three rivers - The Danube, The Main, and The Rhine. We're also doing a pre-cruise stay in Romania to visit Transylvania.

It all begins with packing. We each managed to squeeze into one bag plus a carry-on. Good for a 27-day trip.

Of course, there are pre-cruise necessities like unplugging the TVs and turning off the ice maker.

Turn off the water heater.

Finally, unplug the water softener and shut off the inside water.

Our driver, Theron, arrived at 8:20 AM and zipped us to Orlando International Airport. The Air Canada check-in and TSA went smoothly. We arrived at Gate 93 with about an hour to spare before boarding.

Our inbound aircraft arrive just after 10:30 AM, well in advance of our 11:15 AM boarding time.

We boarded right on time, and shock of shocks, pushed back almost 20 minutes early. We taxied right to the runway and launched. This was our first time flying Air Canada - this leg was Air Canada Rouge. The seating in Business Class on this Airbus A320 was so-so. The chairs were wide and comfy but offered little legroom or movement. The meal was surprisingly good. Arlona had mushroom risotto and I had what the flight attendant described as a Thai chicken, noodle, Asian thing. I would describe it as Pad Thai and it was very good. Salad, a roll, and tasty carrot cake rounded out the meal.

Since we departed early from Orlando, we arrived equally early in Montréal, the first of our two layovers. After deplaning, we followed the signs to "Connections". After a short walk, we arrived at an automated gate where we had to scan our boarding pass for the next flight. That took us to a split for domestic (Canadian) flights or US/International flights and another scan gate. Another boarding pass scan and another short walk brought us to a terminal where we had to scan our passports and were presented with an essentially blank piece of paper. We turned around, handed that to an attendant who scanned our boarding passes for a third time and we were finally granted access to the terminal. *Whew*  It wasn't difficult or time-consuming, but as a process person, scanning a boarding pass three times in about three minutes seemed silly. 

Here at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, we had a little over three hours to kill. One of the benefits of flying Business Class is that it typically comes with entrance to the airline's lounge. In Montréal, that was no exception so we headed to the Maple Leaf Lounge near gate 52.

Overlooking the runway, the lounge provides panoramic views of airport operations, plenty of workspaces and couches, lots of food choices, and of course, a full bar.

I monitored our departure status on Air Canada's website but a departure gate didn't show up. Then, I noticed that this flight is actually operated by Lufthansa and a link to their site. There, I could see we were leaving out of Gate 59, a short walk from the lounge.

The lounge was absolutely packed. When we left, they were at maximum capacity and there was a line to get in. The airport was nuts. People were everywhere and nobody walking in a straight line. It was difficult to walk to our gate because of all the people moving in random directions.

Our flight was delayed about 15 minutes. They seemed a little disorganized at the gate. While this was an Air Canada flight for us, it was operated by Lufthansa. This was our first flight on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, and I have to say, we were impressed.

We each had a private pod with a lay-flat seat, a large video screen, and AKG noise-canceling headphones. Of course, it came with pre-flight bubbly.

Food has gone downhill on aircraft, but I'm happy to report that at least in Business Class, that wasn't the case. Here's a look at the menu.

We arrived just ahead of our scheduled 7:05 AM arrival time. We were surprised to see a Viking representative as we exited the plane. He had a list of all Viking passengers for all cruises and provided directions to connecting flights. Unfortunately, he had outdated information and sent us to Gate 50 - the exact opposite direction of our actual gate - Gate 28. No matter, we know how to read a departure board and we figured it out before we walked the wrong way.

There was quite a line at Passport Control. We struck up a conversation with the couple in front of us when we heard them mention the Viking representative. It turns out that she was raised in the Muskegon, Michigan area, not far from where Arlona grew up and he was from West Bloomfield, not far from where I grew up. They live in Kalamazoo now. Funny how we run into people like that all over the world. They were headed to Zurich, so we won't see them on our cruise.

After clearing Passport Control, we found our way to the Lufthansa Lounge for a Coke Zero and to wait for our 9:30 AM flight to Bucharest.

This flight, also operated by Lufthansa, was a disappointment after the Dreamliner. It was similar to the South American flights we had on Avianca and Latam where the premium cabin was just three or four rows with the middle seat empty. On this Airbus A320neo, that's exactly what it was. each row was two sets of three seats with the middle seat left empty. Oh well, it was only a two-hour flight.

We arrived on time and put boots on the ground in our 66th country. 

We made our way to baggage claim. Much like the flight back from Dubai to Istanbul to Dulles where we had to wait an hour for our bags to show, the much smaller Bucharest Henri Coandă International Airport luggage handling was almost as slow. Waiting more than 45 minutes for your priority-tagged luggage to appear doesn't seem right. But who are you going to complain to? Our bags were there so we grabbed them and headed out. We didn't have to clear Customs as we went through Passport Control in Germany. Romania is also part of the European Union so we were good to go.

An interesting aside - Romania is one of seven E.U. countries that have not converted to the Euro. The Romanian leu is currently trading at about 4.6 Iew to the U.S. Dollar.

We were part of a group of around 20 Viking guests all arriving at the same time. A Viking representative met everyone and escorted us to a waiting bus. We were bussed to the JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel - our crash pad tonight and also Tuesday night.

Our guide for this Romanian pre-cruise stay, Rodica, met everyone at the hotel and passed out itineraries, room keys, bag tags, and so on. We headed to our room to get settled in.

At this point, it had been a long day. By the time we got checked into the hotel, it was already after 3:00PM. We got up at 6:00 AM on Friday. Orlando time is GMT-4 while we are here in Bucharest at GMT+3 for a net seven-hour time difference on top of the long 25-hour travel day. Neither one of us got a lot of sleep on the planes so our plan is to force ourselves to stay up to at least 9:00 PM here so tomorrow morning, we should be mostly adjusted to the new time.

Before that, we needed some chow. We weren't interested in any of the restaurants in the hotel. We saw a place across the street called Chicken Staff.

The establishment wasn't much to look at. They had different types of chicken, kebabs, sandwiches, and the like. We decided on chicken breasts that looked like they had been pounded out and fried like schnitzel plus fries.

It was passable and hit the spot for two hungry and weary travelers. The best part was when I got the email from the credit card company for a foreign transaction, our bill came out to $8.45 U.S. OK - dinner just got better.

We stopped in a local convenience store to grab some pop (soda for all you non-Michigan folks) for the room. We got distracted by this but didn't buy one to try.

I carried our drinks back to the room and Arlona popped by a nearby pair of churches for a few photos.

Tonight, we will repack our bags, putting everything we don't need for the next two days in our larger checked bags. Those will be white-tagged and we'll put them out in the hallway tomorrow morning. The hotel will hold them for us until we return on Tuesday. We'll bring our smaller bags with us as we will leave Bucharest tomorrow morning and head north to Brașov for a couple of days. We will tour Brașov tomorrow and also tour Peles Castle. On Monday, we'll have an entire day touring the Transylvanian highlights. Tuesday, we'll tour Bran Castle - the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula - and return here to the JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel before sailing on Viking Lofn on Wednesday.

Speaking of Lofn, that wasn't our plan. We were supposed to sail on Viking Vidar. Four days ago, I received an email stating, among other things, "This message is to let you know that, due to unavoidable scheduling changes, your ship has been changed to an identical sister ship, Viking Lofn." No idea what happened but the ships are identical so no biggie.

Time to sign off for this first two-day post due to the travel schedule. Time for us to shuffle things in our bags, hang out watching The Olympics broadcast in Romanian, and then get some well-deserved rest. We have full days coming up.