In more ways one it has taken forever to get here, but we made it! We left the house around noon on Thursday (EDT) and flew to Chicago where we were supposed to have a 5:00-something overnight flight to Heathrow, land 8:00am London time and then get on a connecting flight to Bucharest at 9:15am which would have put us here around 2pm romania time on Friday. But right before boarding the London flight, they made an “oh btw” announcement that “a door” needed to be fixed and maintenance was on their way. First it was a “20 minute” delay. Then an hour. Then, “they asked for another hour.” It turned into over three hrs and our chances of making the connecting flight went out the window. The ONLY other flight that day was at 8pm, putting us in Bucharest after 1am. Not great but at least the flight wasn’t outright canceled, but believe me that I had wished it was after we FINALLY boarded only to get EVERYONE situated and a flight attendant to come on and say yeah sorry but we have been informed that maintenance needs to check on one more thing and everyone has to deboard. Oh yeah and bring all your stuff with you. Everything.

The outcry! I was just freaking out like, is this plane safe? Are we ok? I overheard a flight attendant tell the ppl behind us that it was actually the door where the inflatable evacuation slide is. “Believe me, you don’t want that inflating in-air,” he said and that was an image that was seared in my mind from that point on.

You wanna talk about a rowdy group of passengers. Mist of them were already drunk from the first round of delays and a group of the rowdiest ran right back to the bar across from our gate (K15, never forget). So by the time we reboarded (the whole crew was over it by then and allowed us to just bunch into crowds and get our passes scanned out of group order), some ppl were so trashed that I was worried we were going to be a dystopian in-air social experiment but almost everyone fell asleep / passed out immediately.

And then we got to take the Heathrow Express to London for some blessed open air / no airport quality time. It wasn’t the worst layover that’s for sure.

However by the time we touched down in Bucharest, picked up our rental, drove the 17 minutes to the city and checked in to our cutie hotel, it was after 3am. (Side note: that airport was BUSY for being after 1am and Bucharest was still bumping at 3am.)

We left the next morning to start our Transylvanian roadtrip, and I was so sad to check out because it was so pretty/creepy there! And both women we talked to at the desk were so nice. The one the next morning especially! She gave us the sage advice of “don’t feed the bears! They are not pets.” (It’s a real problem with tourists here – way worse than me and the squirrels!)

Well, we are currently in Sibui and I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to just check in and share photos of the Scala Boutique Hotel!

It looks like he’s peeing on the door?!

From this morning!

Courtyard view.

Initial thoughts: Romania was worth the wait 100%! We have had some really nice interactions with a bunch of people here so far and also Sibiu has a small Korean store called Komart lol. Had to throw that in there.

P.S. you know what’s funny/sad? I have wanted to come here for so long that I already had a “Romania” category on my blog, probably from 2007?? After several failed attempts, I finally made it! Grateful that Henry was on board with this :)

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