We chose to fly to Europe on the stormiest day of the summer.
It’s hard to predict these things, really. You make your plans weeks or even months ahead of time, trusting that the world will be friendly to you and allow you to do all the things you hoped to do, but the world is – well, not malicious, not really, just not that concerned about you. It owes you nothing. It is its own thing, and you move ahead as best you can while it lumbers on its own path and all you can do is try to make it work for you without getting squashed.
Kim very carefully did not plan any radically early morning flights for this trip, as waking up at 3am to get on an airplane is a rude way to start a trip. We got up at a somewhat early hour, though, and after some consternation at home we headed off toward O’Hare where we went through security, found our gate, and discovered that it was going to be a long day.
There were storms in Chicago. There were storms in New York City, where our plane was waiting to take off from LaGuardia so it could pick us (and a few hundred other people, similarly situated) up and take us back to LaGuardia for our connecting flight to Rome on ITA. Time passed. Children were born, married, and started families. Pinkerton did not return. Eventually, as our plane stayed in New York later and later, we figured out that there would be no connecting flight from LaGuardia and other plans would have to be made.
This is when we met Mariella, the woman at the Delta Airlines counter. Mariella had just Had It Up To Here With This, and she decided that she was bound and determined to get us to Rome. “You don’t want to fly ITA anyway,” she said. “Their planes are old.” So she cranked up her computer and tried to figure out how to make this happen. She almost got us on a direct flight from Chicago, but the fact that our second leg was ITA wouldn’t let her for reasons that made sense at the time – which annoyed her even further. But a few minutes later she found us four seats on a Delta flight to Detroit, and another four seats on a Delta flight to Rome. “You should take them,” she said, so we did.
At some point in this process her supervisor walked by and Kim made a point of noting how helpful Mariella had been for us. I hope they give her a raise for it. She really went out of her way for us.
We got on the flight and went to Detroit, which has a surprisingly nice airport. It’s clean, relatively modern, and has a lot of food choices. It’s also pretty easy to navigate, as it consists of basically one long straight concourse – long enough to have an internal tram that runs on an elevated track from one end to another. We landed at Gate A-71. Our connecting flight left from Gate A-24, which was about four miles down the line. We had a couple of hours to wait, though, so we walked over to the food court at our gate and had a nice lunch. There were some open tables, wall of giant windows to look out over the tarmac, and a guy bearing a striking resemblance to Cab Calloway playing soft jazz on a baby grand piano.
Whatever they were paying that guy it wasn’t enough.
We sat there, listening to the music, and watched the storms roll in. At one point it was raining so hard you couldn’t even see the tarmac, and that was when I noticed that – without any particular announcement or even break in the constant stream of jazz – the piano guy had launched into a satisfyingly tuneful version of Stormy Weather. I have no idea if anyone else caught this but it made me smile. Shortly thereafter an alarm went off in the terminal – BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause). Nobody paid it any attention, nor did anyone move when the recorded voice insisted we evacuate. To where? No, we sat there, watching the rain and listening to the alarm. BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause). The piano guy just incorporated the alarm into his jazz, right in tempo and on pitch, and we listened to that for a while.
We tipped him well.
Our flight left right on time, which meant we would get to Rome about two hours after we originally thought we would. In the end this worked out better for us getting into our apartment there, since it meant we didn’t have to kill time waiting for when we could check in. So, win.
I cannot sleep on planes. I don’t know why. I mostly just try to rest, which seems to work. It was a reasonably comfortable flight, though, in stark contrast with the flight out last year, and sufficiently uncrowded that Oliver and Lauren had an entire four-seat row to themselves. Three cheers for Delta Airlines, I say.
We got to Rome, picked up the three carry-on bags that had been diverted to checked baggage in Detroit, and found the train from the airport to Testaccio where we were staying.
It’s hard to predict these things, really. You make your plans weeks or even months ahead of time, trusting that the world will be friendly to you and allow you to do all the things you hoped to do, but the world is – well, not malicious, not really, just not that concerned about you. It owes you nothing. It is its own thing, and you move ahead as best you can while it lumbers on its own path and all you can do is try to make it work for you without getting squashed.
Kim very carefully did not plan any radically early morning flights for this trip, as waking up at 3am to get on an airplane is a rude way to start a trip. We got up at a somewhat early hour, though, and after some consternation at home we headed off toward O’Hare where we went through security, found our gate, and discovered that it was going to be a long day.
There were storms in Chicago. There were storms in New York City, where our plane was waiting to take off from LaGuardia so it could pick us (and a few hundred other people, similarly situated) up and take us back to LaGuardia for our connecting flight to Rome on ITA. Time passed. Children were born, married, and started families. Pinkerton did not return. Eventually, as our plane stayed in New York later and later, we figured out that there would be no connecting flight from LaGuardia and other plans would have to be made.
This is when we met Mariella, the woman at the Delta Airlines counter. Mariella had just Had It Up To Here With This, and she decided that she was bound and determined to get us to Rome. “You don’t want to fly ITA anyway,” she said. “Their planes are old.” So she cranked up her computer and tried to figure out how to make this happen. She almost got us on a direct flight from Chicago, but the fact that our second leg was ITA wouldn’t let her for reasons that made sense at the time – which annoyed her even further. But a few minutes later she found us four seats on a Delta flight to Detroit, and another four seats on a Delta flight to Rome. “You should take them,” she said, so we did.
At some point in this process her supervisor walked by and Kim made a point of noting how helpful Mariella had been for us. I hope they give her a raise for it. She really went out of her way for us.
We got on the flight and went to Detroit, which has a surprisingly nice airport. It’s clean, relatively modern, and has a lot of food choices. It’s also pretty easy to navigate, as it consists of basically one long straight concourse – long enough to have an internal tram that runs on an elevated track from one end to another. We landed at Gate A-71. Our connecting flight left from Gate A-24, which was about four miles down the line. We had a couple of hours to wait, though, so we walked over to the food court at our gate and had a nice lunch. There were some open tables, wall of giant windows to look out over the tarmac, and a guy bearing a striking resemblance to Cab Calloway playing soft jazz on a baby grand piano.
Whatever they were paying that guy it wasn’t enough.
We sat there, listening to the music, and watched the storms roll in. At one point it was raining so hard you couldn’t even see the tarmac, and that was when I noticed that – without any particular announcement or even break in the constant stream of jazz – the piano guy had launched into a satisfyingly tuneful version of Stormy Weather. I have no idea if anyone else caught this but it made me smile. Shortly thereafter an alarm went off in the terminal – BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause). Nobody paid it any attention, nor did anyone move when the recorded voice insisted we evacuate. To where? No, we sat there, watching the rain and listening to the alarm. BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause), BEEP BEEP (pause). The piano guy just incorporated the alarm into his jazz, right in tempo and on pitch, and we listened to that for a while.
We tipped him well.
Our flight left right on time, which meant we would get to Rome about two hours after we originally thought we would. In the end this worked out better for us getting into our apartment there, since it meant we didn’t have to kill time waiting for when we could check in. So, win.
I cannot sleep on planes. I don’t know why. I mostly just try to rest, which seems to work. It was a reasonably comfortable flight, though, in stark contrast with the flight out last year, and sufficiently uncrowded that Oliver and Lauren had an entire four-seat row to themselves. Three cheers for Delta Airlines, I say.
We got to Rome, picked up the three carry-on bags that had been diverted to checked baggage in Detroit, and found the train from the airport to Testaccio where we were staying.
One of the things that I just love about Europe – at least all of the places that I’ve been while in Europe, anyway – is that it has phenomenal infrastructure, particularly in terms of public transportation. Rome’s airport is in Fiumicino, about 25km (15 miles) from Testaccio. The trains run every few minutes, and we each paid a grand total of 1.10 euros (maybe $1.25) for our ticket. The train was clean, fast, and on time. This is how things should work.
We got to the bus and metro station at the south end of Testaccio and walked across the asphalt to the ticket machine to buy a weekly bus pass for each of us. This was complicated by the fact that a) it was hot as blazes (the whole time we were in Rome it was about 35C or 94F and absolutely cloudless, which was gorgeous and, admittedly, about 7C or 10F cooler than it had been the previous week), and b) the sun was bright enough that it was actually difficult to read the display screen on the ticket machine, which meant I was kind of guessing as to what I was actually asking it to do. But eventually we got our passes – which we validated on our first bus ride and never once had to pull out of our wallets again until literally the stop before we got off on our last bus ride in Rome when the Bus Police did a spot check on everyone and were rather disappointed that we actually had valid passes – and went to the Testaccio Market for a quick snack. Kim picked up the keys from the Pasticerria Linari where our landlord had stashed them, and we went to the apartment, where we stowed our stuff and crashed like a convertible driven by a bear.
After a couple of hours for a siesta to recharge, we headed out into Rome – tourists on the loose!
2 comments:
Looking forward to the travelogue onslaught. Which would be a good band name.
It would!
I spent a good chunk of yesterday organizing the photos into folders for each planned blog post, and yes, there will indeed be an onslaught.
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