Sunday November 6 - The good, the bad, and the ugly

Today was a travel day, headed back to Italy. As usual, that meant an early morning, but this time we were able to arrange a flight back to Florence - rare, but cool, since it meant we wouldn't have to endure some hellacious transfer from Pisa like we typically do.

So we walk to Amsterdam Central Station, catch a train to Schiphol, and board our flight on time. So far, so good, and it was an uneventful trip to Rome, where we were to change planes. I didn't quite get why they made us go through security all over again in Rome (did they think perhaps the Dutch authorities smoked dope while they screened passengers or something?), but I was too preoccupied to care much as I had spotted something on the tarmac that I'd been hoping to see the entire trip: a Russian jet, this one being a Tupolev TU-154. We just don't see these in the U.S. anymore (not that they were ever common on our shores), and I was bound and determined to get a photo of this one, regardless of how much I hate shooting through terminal windows. Fortunately, we exited the security checkpoint at exactly the right place to get a reasonably clear shot of the Tupolev, and although it's certainly not stock photo quality, it will always occupy a special place in my collection.

All good things must come to an end, I suppose, and of course this applies to good days, too. However, it's always preferable if good days end as the clock strikes twelve, rather than turning miserably, horrendously BAD, and I had no way of knowing how wrong our day was about to go until we got to our departing gate in Rome and were informed that our connecting flight was cancelled. This pronouncement is enough to strike terror in the heart of even the most intrepid traveler, but it's worse when you're in Italy and are flying We-Don't-Care-What-Happens-to-You-as-Long-as-You-Go-Away Airlines. When I asked what they were going to do with us, they let us know that they would take us to Florence by bus. That's right... a BUS. Florence to Rome is, under perfect conditions and no stops, a 3-1/2 hour bus ride, and perfect conditions rarely happen on Sunday nights. Normal people make this trip by train unless they're flying someplace entirely different and are connecting through Rome. And we certainly didn't intend to be in Rome in the first place - our outgoing flight had connected through Milan, and for some inexplicable reason this trip took us south. But a BUS? Wasn't there something else we could do?

As it turns out, were thoroughly and royally stuck. When we asked about the possibility of getting back by train, Alitalia refused to give us a reimbursement that would come close to covering the cost, and we had no way of knowing whether seats would be available on the Eurostar to Florence anyway until we had foregone the bus ride back and gotten ourselves to Rome Central Station. Frustrated by this time but having no other viable options, we trooped miserably downstairs, collected our bags, and then trooped back upstairs to the ticket counter where our boarding passes would be traded for bus vouchers. By this time an angry mob had assembled in front of the counter, and the mob didn't get any happier as an hour went by after we had been told the bus would depart and still... nothing. At about two-thirty we were finally herded outside and put on our coach home, but the nightmare wasn't over yet. As the bus drove on north, clouds that had looked pretty threatening for the last hour gave way to rain, slowing things down until road construction could deliver the final coup de grace, bringing traffic to a virtual standstill for over an hour and a half. Nothing anyone could do and no amount of muttered-under-the-breath oaths could change the fact that about 50 people who purchased and paid for plane tickets so they could get home from their weekend trips at a decent hour were stuck on a bus that wasn't going ANYWHERE.

And for me, insult would soon be added to injury. While the mob in the bus got on each others' nerves and plotted bloody revenge against anyone associated with the airline that had put us in this situation, some combination of being over-tired and trapped in confined places with coughing, sniffling people finally took its toll on my own constitution. Occasionally, a head cold can take over my system with remarkable speed, and after leaving Rome in what I considered to be a normal, healthy state, I was actually surprised by how crappy I felt when we finally hit the pavement in Florence, over five hours later. Unbelievable.

The rest of the ordeal has faded to a bad, blurry memory now, and I think I prefer to leave it that way. Eventually, I'll get healthy again. But one souvenir will remain...



God I love Russian jets!

Cheers,
Leanne