After all of the planning and preparation, it was time to execute! Pack, get on the plane and go on vacation! The day before departure, we decided (after doing a little research) that buying Euros (the symbol is €) locally would give us a better exchange rate than the kiosks you see in international airport terminals. As luck would have it, by the time trip time came around, the dollar had weakened significantly against most foreign currencies, and the Euro in particlar. I decided to buy €1,000 to take with me, and boy was I in for a surprise. It cost me $1,653 to buy those 1,000 Euros!!! That's a 1.653 to one exchange rate. I didn't bother to check the booths at the airports in either Amsterdam or Rome when we passed through, but that was sure a shock to have to pay that much money for another currency. But, that's they way the dollar and the economy were at trip time, so what can you do?
Travel day comes, and most of the packing had been done the previous night. Just a few last minutes items to throw in the suitcase, and we were off. We did have to be careful about not exceeding the 22 kilo (50 pound) weight limit on the bags, but all of our luggage came in under weight. Our flight didn't leave until 3:50 pm, but since it was an international flight - and prudence suggests that you show up nice and early for those - we left the house at 12:15 for the 30 minute ride to George Bush Intercontinental Airport's Terminal D. Checkin at the KLM desk was uneventful and - in typical Dutch fashion - quick and efficient. After passing through security, up the stairs we went to find a bite of lunch before getting on the plane for nine and a half hours.
While having a great burger and a couple of glasses of draught Samuel Adams brewskies, my cell phone rang. It was Kathy Herzog calling to inform someone - anyone - that because of weather, they'd missed their flight to Rome from Chicago and that American was going to get them on Continental out of Newark, NJ. We made arrangements to meet up with them at the Rome airport since their new flight schedule would put them into Rome shortly before we arrived. Once that was taken care of and lunch was complete, it was time to go see our bird: Big Blue's 747-400 Combi (combination passenger/cargo). What was most exciting for me: I had never flown on a 747 before! Here are a couple of pics of the actual plane we flew on that day sitting at the gate at IAH. Just click on them to view them full-size in their original format. FYI, the second pic shows the rear cargo door open - that's where they put the extra cargo containers in what would normally be the passenger compartment.
For posterity's sake, this flight's information is KLM flight 662, departed KIAH 15:30 Fri June 13, 2008 and arrived AMS Saturday June 15 at 07:50. Also, this exact aircraft is registration PH-BFS named City of Seoul. It is a Boeing 747-406M Combi, serial number 28195, delivered to KLM in October of 1996.
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Our seats were over the wing on the port side of the aircraft, and the three of has had the three seats next to the window - something like 38A, B and C if memory serves. The seats weren't too bad, and they were far enough away from the loos and the galleys that being disturbed during the flight wasn't a problem. Since we were over the wing, the engine noise wasn't too bad, either. Of course, most of that was alleviated by the Panasonic noice cancelling headphones we had all purchased for the trip. We received two amazingly good in-flight meal services - a larger dinner about 2 hours into the flight and then a nice breakfast about 2 hours out of Amsterdam. One thing I like about international air carriers: they don't nickle and dime you to death, and as a result, the beer, wine and booze were free! I'm sure that had something to do with me getting 3 hours of sleep on the flight - I usually can't or don't like to sleep while flying. An interesting side note: even though the flight was an "overnight" flight - we weren't scheduled to arrive in Amsterdam until 7:50 am Saturday morning local time - it never got fully dark. It got very dusky, but the sun was never fully extinguished. Our flight path took us a little south of Iceland and over Great Britain, so maybe being that far north had something to do with the fact that it never got fully dark outside. It was dark enough to sleep, though.
Nine and a half hours later (and on time, I might add), we arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. Man, that's a big airport, and lots of blue KLM planes there (it's their hub).
We had a roughly three hour layover there, and because of the European Union, it was the only place we had to go through passport control. Unlike the US, there was no need for us to claim our baggage, pass a customs checkpoint, and recheck our bags - they were checked all the way through to Rome without us having to touch them. Nice! Anyway, we found our Rome departure gate, and I took some photos of Tigger.
After the layover, we boarded a KLM 737-800 for the 2 hour and 15 minute nonstop flight to Rome. Again, thanks to Dutch efficiency, we arrived on time in Rome at 1:05 pm. Unfortunately, that's where the efficiency stopped.
Let me tell ya, the Mexicans could take some lessons from the Italians regarding the mañana attitude! We had to go to the rental car plaza so we could pick up our wheels for the trip, and what a charlie foxtrot that was! We had to find it first, which was a challenge in and of itself, and then we had to wait forever to see a rental agent. There were hoardes of people waiting to rent a car from any one of the seven or so rental agencies in there. What a mess! By the way, because energy prices are so high in Europe, the don't believe in air conditioning much over there. It was running in the rent car area, but it wasn't nearly enough, and it was hot with all those people in there. When we finally got to the counter and got everything signed, we were sent to the parking garage to get the car. We were told it would be about 30 minutes until the car got there from their staging yard. That 30 minutes turned into about an hour and a half - and three vehicle switches. They kept running out of the car we had reserved, and kept having to substitute a different vehicle. But we finally got it - and dad handed me the keys to drive. First mission: find our way back to the baggage claim area and pick up the rest of our party, which now included mom, dad, Jack, Linda and me. Yep...five of us were going to cram ourselves and our baggage into that little popcorn fart Suzuki Altea XL. After getting lost in the airport, I found my way back to baggage claim, and then the circus of trying to stuff us and our luggage into the car begain. It took about 15 minutes to figure out how to make it all work, and even after that, poor Jack was stuck in the back seat with a piece of luggage under his right leg, holding a bag in his lap, and his left leg stretched out between the two front seats. You should've seen me trying to shift gears around him - it was comical! And yes, the car was a standard - most vehicles over there are. That fact made it fun driving in the hilly territory we were going to.
After leaving the immediate vicinity of the airport - I knew how to get us that far at least - we discovered that the TomTom GPS wasn't working. The Western Eurpoean maps were on the unit's storage card, but it wouldn't pull any satellites. And we had no paper maps or anything. Needless to say, I pulled off into the SOS lane on the side of the autostrada because we definitely had an SOS - we didn't know where the hell we were going without TomTom! Turns out the unit hadn't been switched over to the Western European map "officially", even though we'd done some route simulations on it. After making sure the right maps were selected, boom, the satellites showed up, and TomTom came to life. With one slight (and until later, undiscovered) configuration mistake. Turns out we had it set to take us on the shortest route.
Write this down: NEVER EVER set TomTom (or probably any other GPS device for that matter) to the shortest route if you're driving in unfamiliar territory - which would definitely include Italy for us on this trip. I swear TomTom calculated a hundered different routes, and it darned sure picked the shortest route. Luckily, all of the roads it laid forth were paved, but I think some of them were previously goat paths. I was a nervous wreck once we got off the autostrada and onto the "back roads" that led us to Rocca di Papa. For instance, during some of the route simulations (and maps I'd seen online), I was expecting TomTom to take us down the western side of Ciampino airport south of the big loop around Rome. That day, TomTom decided to have me cut east north of Ciampino airport, and decided to route me through the town of Ciampino! I wasn't expecting to turn east until we were south of the airport. Here I was, a nervous wreck with armpits down to my knees, driving this little car up these narrow streets - and into Ciampino's traffic circle (I HATE those!) trying to follow TomTom's now rapid-fire directions. It was crazy! But TomTom finally got us to Rocca di Papa, although a little hairily (if that's a word).
Once we got to the town of Rocca di Papa (and luckily we had been forewarned by our "advance scouting party" (i.e. Reba, Mac, Charles and Brenda) that the villa was extremely hard to find if you didn't know what you were looking for), we found a place to park near the town plaza. And up the hill comes Charles. It was so nice to see a familiar face and know that the salvation of the villa was near. Then he pointed the way to the villa, and I said, "You want me to drive the car up THAT?!?!?!" But I did, and pulled the car into the driveway of the villa, and we were there. The picture below shows the steepness of one of the roads in Rocca. I actually came DOWN that road on the left (it doesn't look too bad in the picutre, but that's because the camera was tilted up for this shot - that sucker was STEEP!) - and parked in a parking spot next to the silver car just above the person on the bicycle in black (just to the right of the red shirt on the bicycle). You can't really see the road I had to drive up to park the car at the villa, but there is a road just under the left of the big green tree just behind the back of that silver/goldish station wagon car. That was the road up to the villa - and it was every bit as steep as the road you can see on the left.
Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the road up to the villa, or the road we had to take into Rocca (except for the little piece of it you can see on the left in the above photo). The main reason: I was usually driving the car up that steep SOB and never had time to bail out for a photo op. But you should've seen it. It was steep, with a solid wall on the right and a solid line of cars on the left, and not much room on either side of a maneuvering car. Oh, and the road was really a two-way street, because as the line goes, what goes up must come down. Essentially, if someone was going up, those at the top would have to wait. If someone was coming down, those at the bottom of the hill would have to wait. Pretty crazy.
Before we left the airport, we found out that the Herzogs had had more flight trouble and flight delays and wouldn't be in until Sunday morning. But we had one more of our group that was arriving that Saturday evening: Barry. He had made arrangements to ride the train from the airport to the town of Marino just a few kilometers away from Rocca, so we had to drive over and pick him up at the train station there. The problem was, we didn't know exactly when he would be arriving, and he didn't have a cell phone. We made two trips from the villa to the station (which meant I had to drive on those crazy roads three times that day alone), and luckily he was there the second time. Lucky for him, because it was the last train from Termini to Marino.
After that, I was digging in the fridge for a beer or anything alcoholic to take the edge off of all the crazy driving I'd had to do that day. And I was hungry and a little dehydrated. Along with the beer, I drank a LOT of water from the tap. These people invented clean water several thousand years ago, right? I'll admit I was a little nervous - I've spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central America, and the tap water is definitely NOT safe to drink there - but the water was good. Luckily, the Italian version of Montezuma never took his swift revenge on me, so I drank the villa's tap water quite frequently during the trip. Also, Mac had made a run to the alimentary (small market) in Rocca earlier, so there were some munchies to quell the hunger pains.
After that, it was to bed and time to recover from jet lag and the long trip over. By this point I was completely exhausted and looking forward to a good night's sleep. Luckily, Sunday was a rest and recovery day.
More on the trip in subsequent articles.