The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Seattle to Amsterdam to Rome to Catania

I rarely write about a travel day because there is seldom anything to write about. You go to the airport, get on the plane and many mind (and butt-) numbing hours later you get off at your destination. Fatigue and jet lag notwithstanding, that's not much of a story. This trip, though, has started off quite differently.

We should have suspected a little shift in the routine as we waited outside the house for neighbor Rick who was going to give us a ride to the airport shuttle ... while he waited at his house for us to come by and pick him him up! When we figured out the miscommunication, he came dashing down in his truck. We loaded the bags only to discover his front seat was way too small for the three of us. So out the bags came, he dashed home, we tossed everything into the trunk of my car, picked him up and raced off to the shuttle, about 15 minutes later than planned. Not great, but we still had time to make it.

Halfway there, I realized I was wearing the wrong glasses! I had been doing some things on the computer that morning and was still wearing my computer glasses! They're great up close but useless for anything farther away. I couldn't tolerate them as my only vision aid for 2+ weeks. So ... fast U-turn, race home, swap glasses, and now we were really pushing the space/time continuum. As we rushed to make it, we developed Plan B: driving to the airport ourselves if we missed the shuttle. Bless his heart, Rick was OK with that although I'm sure it wasn't tops on his list of how best to spend the morning!

All I can say is that it was a good thing the Gig Harbor police didn't have radar traps set up along our route! We skidded into the parking lot with seconds to spare. The shuttle driver was just about to give up and head off without us but in the end we just got an adrenaline rush and a trip to the airport. Back on schedule, right?

The long flight from Seattle to Amsterdam arrived about 45 minutes later than scheduled. Normally this would not be a problem except that today we had barely an hour and a half to make our connecting flight to Rome (before the late arrival!) and knew we would have to pass through immigration and another security screening on our way to the next gate which, of course, would be a long way away. (Amsterdam is a huge airport!) Fortunately our seats were close to the main exit of the plane so while it was another mad dash, we just made the connecting flight. Back on schedule, right?

Let me talk to you about winglets, those little upturned tips that give airplane wings more stability in the air or something similarly critical. We were all packed into the plane, the doors were closed and we were ready to push back when the pilot announced a delay. Traffic was slowed down because of heavy fog at the airport and he had been directed to hold at the gate for about half an hour. Still no problem. We had a 2+ hour layover in Rome.

As we all sat calmly packed into this sardine can, suddenly the whole plane shook with a strangely loud noise. A big US Air plane had pulled into the gate beside us and his wing had sliced off the winglet on the left side of our plane. Not only that bit of surgery but he nearly removed the end of his own wing in the process! Confusion ensued. The pilot announced that our plane wouldn't be going anywhere for a few days and we were all off-loaded into the gate area while they figured out what to do.

Everyone was snapping pictures of what they could see of the damage but given the position of the jetway, that wasn't much. In the photos, though, you can see the sheared off tip of our wing under the damaged wing of the US Air plane and the severed winglet on the ground. Finally they announced that our flight would leave at 12:15 from another gate (on another aircraft, of course!) That turned into 1:20, but eventually we were off to Rome 4+ hours later than originally planned. Needless to say, we would miss our connecting flight to Sicily. (We chuckled knowingly when we heard general announcements that the US Air flight to Philadelphia had been canceled!)

In Rome they unload many flights out on the tarmac and bus you to the terminal. As Margene stepped off the bus, her right knee just collapsed! She crashed down onto the drive and just couldn't get up. Two other passengers lifted her into vertical, supported her into the terminal and got her into a found wheelchair. I was stumbling along behind with the luggage from both of us. Our good Samaritans left us on the concourse (thank you both, whoever you were!) By then her leg was working again so I found her a place to wait while I tried to sort out how we were going to get to Sicily.

The line at the Alitalia service desk was endless, but half an hour later I had two boarding passes on the 6:40 flight to Catania. As luck would have it, the departure gate was right across from the help desk so we didn't have that much of a hike, just a two-hour wait! Naturally the departure was delayed another half hour because the inbound flight was late and of course the departure gate was changed, but eventually we did make it to Catania ... not at 4pm as planned but more like 9pm by the time we went to pick up the rental car. Adventure over, right?

The trick was finding the rental car office. Information said to go out the door and it was to the right. But where? We saw a couple of low buildings two roads over in roughly that direction. They had rental car offices, just not ours. Two helpful strangers later, we crossed yet another main road and there, hidden behind a big directional sign, was the place we were looking for. Bear in mind, all this was happening at night, with a limping bride and dragging luggage.

Paperwork done, we were directed to Space #8 in the rental car area at the far end of a big parking lot. Of course our car was not in Space #8 but we had the license plate number and finally found it in Space #19. So loading the luggage and setting the GPS we were off ... sort of. There was no obvious way out of the parking lot except a gate with a key pad. Since I had not been told anything about gate codes when I filled out the papers, we looked for some other exit. Finding none, we eventually discovered that the gate opened automatically when you pulled up to it. Now, maybe, we were almost done? Please?

Yes, we found our way to the apartment -- a ground floor unit. Thank you very much for no stairs. I'm not sure I had the energy to drag the bags up a flight or two. Marina and Andrea, the owners, are lovely people who take great pride in the facilities and spent time orienting us to the apartment and suggesting where to go and what to see. We made a date for them to join us for dinner on Monday night and, perhaps, help them prepare some real Sicilian home cooking on Tuesday. Now you're talking!

[Saturday Morning Note: 30+ hours in transit is tough at any age, but now that we have somewhat caught up on sleep, we see it was all just another adventure ... and after all, aren't adventures really what travel is all about?]


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