Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 2

Getting There is Half the Leg Room

I was quite surprised that Barb was relatively disciplined in packing her suitcase. Unlike what Liz wrote in her previous article, Barb and I have never done a “dry run” when packing to see how full things will get in our suitcases.

This is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because it really just eliminates a big argument about what belongs on our trip and what doesn’t. This discussion will almost always involve shoes or more specifically why more shoes is not better.

It’s bad because it’s not until I attempt to bring Barb’s suitcase down from the bedroom to the front door (which by the way is two floors down) that I realize how heavy her luuage is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting some exercise before going on a trip but I’ve got to think about my back as no good will come of a back strain 10 minutes before we’ve even opened the front door to leave.

Anyway, kudos to Barb for keeping the suitcase weight under control. She was able to avoid the infamous orange “Heavy” tag that gets put on the suitcases at the ailine checkin desk for baggage that is excessively hefty. I assume that this is to warn the baggage handlers at the airport that the bag is beyond just heavy and into the dangerous category. Pete and Liz weren’t so lucky as their suitcase got the orange tag. In fairness, they have a single, combined suitcase between them so this situation is to be expected.

I’m writing this section of our Adventures on the flight from Vancouver to London. British Airways is definitely one of our favourite airlines (if not THE favourite). The only downside of this flight is that Barb and I are constantly reminded of the fact that the last time we flew on BA (last year at this time going to France), we were flying business class as we had enough BA points for the upgrade.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to fly business class you know what I mean that on a long flight like this it’s really quite an experience. My knees touching the seat in front of me only serve to reinforce the fact that it will be a few more years before we accumulate enough points to get to travel in the front of the plane again.

Delays, Italian Style

We were given our boarding pass in Vancouver for our connecting flight from London to Rome. This, of course, doesn’t mean that we will actually be boarding that flight. We’re still anxiously waiting to know if the Italian air traffic controllers who are going on strike today will have a large impact to our connecting flight tomorrow. I guess only time will tell on that front.

Later on that day …

We were pleasantly surprised to find out that there were no flight delays in Rome. Not only that, but our luggage were among the first to come out of baggage check. These signs are all pointing to good fortune for us during this trip.

We had made arrangements with the hotel in Rome to get a shuttle to pick us up from the airport. One of the extra side benefits of this was that we were told that the driver would be waiting for us in the airport holding a sign with “Smith” on it.

I’ve got to admit that I’ve seen this lots of times in the movies and on TV and have always wanted to have someone pick me up holding a sign with my name on it. I think that everyone should be able to experience this kind of thing at least once in their lives. That and flying business class. But if can, do the business class thing first just in case the deal with the sign never works out.

We had been to Rome before on our honeymoon (11 years ago) and last time we were here we took the train from the airport into town then took a taxi to the hotel. I remember that the taxi ride cost us about $50 and took about 30 minutes. We later found out that the hotel was about 3 blocks from the train station and that we probably went on a tour of the city at our expense.

It was mostly because of this bad experience from 11 years ago that we decided to take a shuttle.

The shuttle driver got us from the airport to our hotel in pretty good time. We were doing about 140 km/hr on a highway posted at 100 and we were still being passed by other cars!

We got into our hotel at around 5:30PM today and after a quick rest, went out to see what bella Roma had waiting for us.

Although the sun was almost down, it was really humid and about 23 degrees. We’re really concerned how stifling hot it will be starting tomorrow during the afternoon sun. As Rome is built upon many hills, there is a fair amount of uphill walking so there’s no way to avoid working up a sweat.

Living in Vancouver, we never have to deal with any humidity even in the summer time so when we travel to a place like Rome where high humidity is a fact of life, it’s really hard to get used to.

We ended up walking around to the Trevi Fountain (complete with about 10,000 other tourists) before going for dinner. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a custom at this fountain that if you toss a coin in it is said that you are sure to visit Rome again. Barb and I did just that in 1994 on our first visit here and we’re glad to see that the fountain has lived up to its promises.

The four of us found a nice restaurant in an out of the way place near Piazza Barberini (where the above pictures were taken). We all had four different pizzas Italian style (with the really thin crust) and accompanied this with a few bottles of their excellent house red wine. I normally don’t really care for thin crust pizza but as they say (and I’ve been waiting months to use this one) “when in Rome, do as the Romans”.

If our trip only stayed as good as today, we would all return home four very happy people.

Buona notte,

Baden

Goto the next episode of Our Excellent Italian Adventure