March 25-26

The first leg of the trip was rather uneventful. We woke up around 5 am to get to the airport on time to catch our 7:30 am flight to New York. Our female pilot and copilot got us to New York a bit ahead of schedule so we had to wait a bit longer for our next flight to London. Since the flight didn’t offer any food and instead had $4 snack boxes we didn’t eat on the flight over. But I had planned ahead, in order to thwart the airline’s attempt at getting us to buy food on the plane or in the airport I packed a disposable tupperware with tuna and some bread, and made tuna sandwiches. It held us over for our next flight which offers food.

After the great start, things started to go wrong. First, we had to wait almost an hour to take off because JFK airport was under a lot of construction so all the planes had to wait in line to get on the runway. The captain tried to keep us informed. Eventually he said that we were 10th in line for the runway and would take off soon….about 10 minutes later we took off. Come to think of it, it’s kinda amazing how they can get so many planes in the air in such a short time.

The flight itself went quite smoothly. The plane was as comfortable as it could get for a 7 hr flight, and the food was so, so. We were on a 777 so each seat had its own TV set. This was nice since we could choose our own channels to watch. Many on the flight including us watched Aeon Flux… it wasn’t that good…but it made the time pass faster.

The pilot flew pretty fast and we were only about 30 minutes behind schedule by the time we got to London. But, apparently Heathrow airport was having some issues of it’s own and wasn’t ready for us to land. We were told to stay in a holding patter over London for about 45 minutes. Going in big circles we could see 4 other planes also circling… I sure hope we have enough fuel. This delay was bad news since we had another flight to catch to get to Rome. The combination of delays ate at our 1 ½ hour that we had between the flights. By the time we unboarded it was already too late. We missed our ride to Rome!

When we exited the plane we were told to go to the American airlines counter to be reassigned to another flight. Hoping to catch the next earliest flight and not knowing when it is, we rushed to get to the counter. We had to first wait for a shuttle to get to another terminal. Once at Terminal 1 we found ourselves at the end of the line for another security check. After security we stood in line for the AA counter. The wait was pretty lengthy, it seems like every large group or people with a lot of questions and requests somehow ended up in front of us! There was a school group of about 50 students, and another smaller group of friends who decided they want to be on the earliest transfer flight together and refused to go separate even though many of the flights only had a few seats.

After what felt like forever, we finally go to the ticket counter. The attendant told us that she had reserved us on another flight on British Airway in 4 hours. For the inconvenience however, she is giving us a food voucher good for 29.90 pounds. Oh and also, we need to go check in at the British Airway counter right next to the AA counter.

…. Ah, yes, of course…~sigh

We picked up our bags and went to the back of the rather long line at BA. It shouldn’t be too bad I thought, the AA counter had 4 attendants and the BA counter has 6. That is until most of them decided to go on break. We watched as 4 attendants walked away after 1 or 2 more customers. Down to 2 attendants… Eventually we checked in and got our tickets. At the very least the plane was leaving from the same terminal so we don’t have to switch.

Going downstairs, we hit a large section of the terminal that was dedicated to shops and restaurants. ‘Duty free’ the store signs scream, but it was still way too expensive. Anything in pounds is expensive to us Americans. We found a restaurant called Giraffe and made good use of 25 pounds in food, leaving the rest for tip. Food is quite expensive, 25 pounds is equivalent to like $50. 25 pounds got us 2 entrée, 1 cheesy bread, and 2 drinks…The numbers on the menu initially all look correct, 3 for a smoothie, 10 for a lunch entrée, and then when you realize that it’s not dollars but pounds it’s like, dang!

After lunch we went out to the mall, found ourselves some benches, laid down and waited. Jae took a nap, I stayed awake to guard our bags and people watched.

At last, the led flight information screen shuffled and showed the gate number of our flight to Rome.

Since we were placed last minute both of us got asile seats on the same row. Darn, I usually prefer the window seat so that I can lean against the window and sleep. But the flight was only 2 hours so it shouldn’t be too bad. The only thing that made it uncomfortable was that the lady passenger in the middle seat (plane was a 3×3 seater) was a bit on the large side. When she fell asleep her arm fell off the arm rest and onto my seat taking up about 1/3 of the already pretty small seat…. I didn’t want to have her arm on my lap or be rude and wake her, so I just scooted over to the edge which made the flight even more uncomfortable.

I was so happy when the captain announced we have reached Rome. 5 hours late, but we got there!

Off the plane we go and on to the baggage claim area. We waited at the belt for our luggage to arrive, and waited, and waited. Soon all the passengers cleared out with their luggage and the belt stopped moving. ~sigh

Jae searched out the information booth and gave the attendant the address to our hotel. She said that the bags will arrive in a later flight that evening and she’ll get the bags to us soon. I guess, on the bright side, at least they do know the location of our bags. I was thinking that maybe I should’ve bought our tickets with American Express with travel protection because I think they give you a few hundred dollars to buy necessities if your luggage ever gets lost or delayed. Oh wells, next time.

We exchanged some money and bought tickets for the train to Rome’s Termini station. 30 minutes later we arrived. A short walk later we found our hotel. The place is located on the 4th floor of a building, and seems to be family owned, they also owned a hotel on the 3rd floor. The ‘son’ I think speaks English and showed us to our room. The room wasn’t anything to brag about but it’s clean and has a bed that looks very tempting right about now.

But, we’ve already wasted most of our day so instead of resting we grabbed the camera and the map provided to us by the hotel and headed off to the coliseum. The coliseum was as majestic and beautiful as I remembered. It’s too bad that traffic seems even worse and louder than before. My tripod was in my checked bag so it was hard taking night shots. Most of them turned out blurry but it was fun anyhow. We trekked around the area, ate some gelatti and then turned in for the night.

By the time we made it back it was around 11 pm, still no bags, maybe I misheard…I could’ve swore that she said it would be delivered tonight. But Jae said that he thought it would be delivered via mail which could take days! The good thing was that at the very least we had our toothbrushes with us. I kept it in our carry-on to brush during our long flights. I suppose tomorrow, first thing is to go buy clothes, bummer. What a day.