Off to Italy for a week!
The flight from San Francisco to Rome works flawlessly, even arrived early. I even got some sleep in, too. Even though the flights were booked more than 6 weeks in advance, my 2M Miler and 1K status did not help. Some aisle seats opened up and I snagged them, but it was not possible to purchase up to Premium Economy.
Oh well.
We made our way to Rome Termini to catch a connection to Florence. Our original train was about 4:30 pm – booked with a two hour buffer as we came in on an international flight.
One thinks one could take an earlier train, especially on First Class. Easy Tiger! We found the ticket office and after a quite entertaining wait (not sure what was yelled about) and fending off people (apparently lines, ahem queues, are just a recommendation) the host send us to the hat he thinks may be a shorter line. The numbers you get are at 460 and they are serving 408, so that sounds convincing.
Who knew that Italy has several train systems? We split up to line up on two different booths. TrenItalia (who has our ticket) and .Italo, which we find out later don’t serve each other tickets. The other line does not move.
Did the ticket say it can be canceled until time of departure? It did! The .Italo train claims to leave 90 minutes earlier. Buying that ticket is easy on a machine and then I only need to request a refund for the .Italo, right? Got one out of two here. The machine that promises to give a refund wants me to identify by means of items I don’t have – like an Italian health card or another ticket. Oh well. Time enough to read the fine print. Ah! I can call a number and cancel that way. After about 20 rings it goes to voicemail on which the first thing they promise is that they listen to every message. Yeah right. I left two messages with all details and am almost certain I will never get my money back.
Florence
Pisa
Bologna
Arena Di Verona
Venice
Lago di Garda
Verona
A Morning in Rome
Some high angles to avoid all the tourists. No offense.
The Return
Well, going back is new. Rome airport is a nice shopping paradise but we behaved. Mostly.
Flight UA506 from Rome to San Francisco has an issue with the navigation system. At about 4:50 (we started boarding at 2:30) we get an announcement that with a lot of network help after various re-boots they found a workaround. We’ll fly at a lower altitude. For that purpose they have to take off cargo and add fuel.
Hmm.
Is this the time to get off the plane? Decisions, decisions.
5:05 Via an announcement we hear that ground services advises that it will take about 35 minutes. The plane is uncomfortably hot in the back and egress would delay us even more. The cargo door is not open yet.
Hmm.
5:37 An announcement asks us to fasten our seatbelts. They think they get us there in only 6 minutes more, 12 hours and 13 minutes.
It’s really tempting to open a pool in which city we are going to land 🙂
5:47 Official pushback and official arrival in San Francisco is 9:39 pm. We have our luggage at 10:09 pm and make our way home. Thanks more than ever to the United crew for getting us home safely.
StageAficionado 