Saturday June 28
Dad was up super early this morning, because he helped haul some of the group and their luggage to the airport for their Saturday morning departures. Mom and I got to sleep in a little, which was nice. When dad returned, we were both up and trying to finish our packing. We had to be out of the villa between noon and 1:00 pm, so we were working to finish our packing and do a little bit of last minute tidying up around the villa. It was hotter than hell already that morning, so by the time I'd gotten the car loaded, I had completely ruined my morning shower.
With the car loaded, we locked the villa, said goodbye to Bruno (the villa's groundskeeper - and we gave him some unused food from the fridge) and off we went. Since we had scouted the route to the Holiday Inn a couple of days previous, finding it and getting there were easy. We were assigned to a room and up we went...only to find the much-anticipated air conditioning wasn't working all that great. Since the villa had no air conditioning, we were really looking forward to some cold, dry air. No such luck. The air was only slightly drier and slightly cooler than in the villa, and it definitely wasn't the refreshing blast of cool we were so looking forward to.
We hung around the hotel for a little while (and dad took a nap) before we left on the odyssey of returning the rental car. As with most rental cars, you have to return them with full fuel tanks. So we stopped at a filling station we had spied earlier and filled 'er up.
With what turned out to be the wrong fuel....
The rental was a diesel, and it ran great, had plenty of power for climbing the hills, and was fuel efficient before we broke it. When we pulled into the filling station, we knew they had diesel there - it was on the sign by the road. And both of us being diesel drivers at home, we were trying to take the utmost care in making sure we put the proper fuel in the car. Heck, dad had even had to fill it up earlier in the week on the way back from Pompeii, and he didn't have any problem. But we couldn't make heads or tails of which pump was diesel - and no one spoke a lick of English. So we guessed (poorly, I might add) and chose the green pump handle. Green pump handles mean diesel in the US, so surely they meant the same thing over there, right?
Wrong.
It was some sort of bio fuel - and not biodiesel - particular to this chain of filling stations. The car sputtered and died right there in the filling line, and needless to say, dad and I both looked at each other and said a few choice 4 letter words. So we had to push the car out of the fuel line and out of the way, then we got on the horn to the Avis help line. Naturally, the lady initially answered in Italian, but thank goodness she spoke somewhat broken but understandable English. After 25 minutes on the phone (that should be a pretty big hit on my cell phone bill), including some time talking with the station attendant to get our address/location, we found out that the tow truck would be there within 30 minutes. After the experience we had trying to pick up the car 2 weeks earlier, I figured 30 minutes would turn into a couple of hours. Much to my surprise, 27 minutes after I hung up the phone, in pulls a tow truck. He got it loaded up, and after some comical attempts at communication (we spoke virtually no Italian, and the driver didn't speak a single word of English), we finally figured out that we needed to get in the truck and ride with him to the Avis yard near Fiumicino's Leonardo da Vinci airport (Rome's main airport, and the one we flew into 2 weeks previous). We got there, dropped off the car, then caught a ride with one of the Avis dudes that was delivering a car to the pickup terminal. There, the lady at the desk tried to tell us that we would likely be responsible for the repair costs even though we had purchased every type of insurance concievable when we rented the car. We said whatever, do what you have to do, and left to find a cab back to the hotel.
Now that was an experience. The cab was a Fiat - a pretty small one - but we fit in the back seat relatively comfortably. I'm glad I buckled my seat belt, though. I didn't think a Fiat could go that fast, but sure enough, we were doing 145 kph down the autostrada. That works out to roughly 90 miles per hour! And there were some cars that were passing us up! It was scary, but we sure got to the hotel in a hurry. We paid the driver the €30 fare (including a €3 tip), then we went in search of a stiff drink. We headed up to the room, made reservations in the hotel restaurant for supper, and proceeded to consume the last of the bottle of scotch and the last beer we had brought from the villa.
Now, many of you have probably had more than one unpleasant experience in a variety of hotel restaurants. Poor service, questionable to horrible food, high prices, etc. etc. We were expecting pretty much all three from this hotel's restaurant until we got down there. We were most pleasantly surprised at the 4-star service we received. And the meal was absolutely fabulous - one of the better restaurant meals we had while travelling over there. And the price wasn't all that unreasonable - expensive, yes, but not overly so. We had 2 bottles of a pretty decent red wine called Aglianico del Vulture, a wonderful insalata caprese (sliced tomato with sliced mozarella and basil topped with EVOO - yum!), a main course and dessert. All of that came up to €114 (roughly $177). Granted, expensive, but for the quality of food and service - which again was by all means 4-star - not overly expensive. Then it was up to the room and to bed.
Sunday June 29
Sunday started early. The hotel had a free shuttle to the airport, but it ran on a schedule rather than on demand, and they didn't take reservations - it was first come, first serve. Our flight was at 11:55, and the shuttles ran at 7:45 and 8:30, but not again after that until 10:30 - that was cutting it a little too close for us, especially for an international flight on an airline (Alitalia) that is known for jacking around with seating assignments. So to give ourselves a cushion just in case the bus was full, we decided to catch the 7:45 bus. That means I had to get out of bed way before I usually like to. I was up and at 'em at 6:30. Keep that time in mind.
We got on the 7:45 bus (which didn't end up actually leaving until 8:05 or 8:10) with no incident, and it was off to the airport. Once there, we found out that Alitalia wouldn't open their checkin desk for our flight until 3 hours before scheduled flight time, but finding the proper checkin desk was a challenge. Leonardo da Vinci Airport is huge, and we had to walk a ways to find the desk, and then we had to stand in line for them to open it up...until about 9:30. The mañana attitude is great, isn't it? We were second in line to check in behind this one guy...who almost got himself hauled off to the pokey because he was arguing with the desk agent about wanting to check someone in that wasn't present. Even over there, that's a no-no. More on this dude in a minute.
Our turn finally comes at the desk, and the agent's computer breaks. It won't scan passports, and it won't print out luggage tracking tags, so we had to move to the adjacent desk...all this while people at the back of the line are getting pissed off at us thinking we're being difficult. It didn't help that the guy before us WAS being difficult, but it wasn't our fault the computer broke. Anyway, we finally get checked in and make our way to the gate. Then it was time to find something to eat.
Finally boarding time came, and onto the plane we go. We find our seats and get set to be crammed on that 767-300ER for 9.5 hours. Everyone's aboard (so we thought), and departure time comes and goes. I'm sitting right over the aft cargo door, and I notice that they haven't closed it. Then I see them start taking cargo and baggage containers OUT of the aircraft's cargo hold. Wait! They're going the wrong direction! Then some security people show up on the tarmac, and the captain finally gets on the overhead and tells us what's going on. Remember that dude that was in front of us at checkin? His other party had finally showed up and they had checked in - we saw them in the secure area of the airport. But they hadn't bothered to board the plane. Their luggage was aboard, but they weren't. Needless to say, that's not a good thing, so they had to unload some of the baggage and cargo containers, find their baggage, and take it off the plane. They finally accomplished that, reloaded the plane, and we were off. Almost an hour and a half late.
The flight was nonstop to Newark, NJ, and was mostly uneventful, even though we were an hour late arriving (he made up some time during the flight). The first meal was pretty good, but the second meal (a snack) was horrible. There was lots of weather around New Jersey, and we got into some of it as we made our approach into Newark. It was bumpy enough that the lady sitting in the seat in front of mom had to make use of the barf bag. But I didn't think it was that bad. The pilot had to shoot a Cat-III ILS approach into Newark, as visibilities were way below what most sane pilots would want to fly in. We got to the gate, went through passport control, retrieved our luggage for the walk through customs, then rechecked our luggage to Houston. Then it was off to find something to eat - those "meals" we were served seemed like Alitalia was trying to clean out their fridge since they're so close to bankruptcy, and we were all starving. We found a restaurant and chowed down on some really good burgers and fries, washed down with three frosty cold mugs of Samuel Adams. Yum!
Due to the weather, things were generally fubar at Newark airport. Lots of flights were delayed or cancelled, and there were lots of pissed off people running around in there. But according to the monitors, our 8:15 pm Houston flight was on time. Yeah, right... Because of many different types of delays, we didn't even board the plane until 9:15, and once boarded and pushed back, we had to wait another hour on the ground in the takeoff queue. Our scheduled 11:10 pm arrival into Houston didn't actually occur until 1:15 am Monday morning.
I have trouble sleeping on airplanes, even with the use of noice cancelling headphones. So I didn't sleep at all on the Rome-Newark trip, and I was only able to take about an hour-long nap on the Newark-Houston flight. Doing the time conversion, I had been awake since 11:30 pm Saturday night Houston time, and after collecting our bags and getting home and ready for bed, it was 2:30 when I finally hit the sack. That's 27 hours straight with only a 1 hour cat nap (which was continuously interrupted by the large hips and absolutely disgusting perfume of one of the flight attendents as she lumbered up and down the aisle; and then the bitch spilled cold water on me during the second drink service....). And all of that was coupled with only 5 hours of sleep the night before. Needless to say, I was exhausted. It took several days to get the body right again after that adventure.
So to close out this epic story...what a great trip. It was my first to Europe, and it was definitely one for the books. Even though I was the youngest of our group by about 25 years, it was still a great trip and I felt privileged to have been allowed to participate. One of these days, I will definitely have to visit Rome and Italy again, because there were so many things we didn't get to see or do - and quite a few things we didn't know we should have seen or done. Two weeks sounds like a long time to be somewhere, but with so much to see and do, it is impossible to fit it all into two weeks. Or even two months. I think Italy will warrant more than one return trip to see it all, and once the dollar strengthens against the Euro, I would definitely consider spending my vacation and travel dollars to go back. And if you're planning to go to Europe at some point, Italy needs to be close to the top of your list of places to visit - there's something there for everyone.