Travel Notebook: Bucharest, Romania
People always ask us, what’s up with you and these weird countries? Why are you venturing deeper and deeper East into Europe? Why not go to popular places like Rome or Santorini? Our response is always the same: We’re not tourists. We don’t go to enjoy ourselves. We go to meet people, learn their lifestyles, discover the little things that make their home cities unique, and finally make an effort to take some of it with us.
Plus, we hate beaches. And tourists. And tourists who wear fanny packs.
So, in light of being non-tourists, we jetted off to yet another obscure city called Bucharest to find out what makes the Romanian capital tick.
FLYING TO BUCHAREST
Travelling visa-free? Romania is no exception. If you’ve got one of those golden passports that let you travel anywhere, you’ll be granted fuss-free entry. If you’re a visa national, you would need either a Romanian visa or a Schengen visa. Loads of airlines fly to Bucharest daily, but we recommend Wizz Air, which departs from the unsurprisingly sleepy (and marvelously convenient) Dubai World Central Al Maktoum International Airport and takes you into the heart of the Eastern European country.
Wizz Air offers three flights from Dubai to Bucharest (Tue, Thu, Sat) every week starting from EUR 79.99 (one way price, including all taxes and non-optional charges).
Once you land, be sure to use one of the kiosks at the arrival area to hail a taxi and avoid thieving cabbies. It should only cost about 30 lei (roughly the same amount in dirhams) to reach the city centre. This is one point that you need to learn if you’re going to visit Bucharest and you don’t want to get ripped. We’ve heard of tourists being charged 100 euro from Otopeni airport to the centre!