Uh oh! Has it really been six months since my last post?
Well, now's as good a time as any to get started again, I guess, having just arrived in the magic kingdom (Italy, NOT Disneyland!) for my fourth time. It's funny; my heritage is German and Scots Irish, and a little French tossed in on the side, but I feel like this is where I belong. The sights, the sounds, the smells (well, mostly) and the food all stir my blood. Just flying over it last night on the way in, catching a glimpse of the Colosseum and the Wedding Cake (the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele) gave me such a thrill, and not just because it was the end of another standby odyssey that began almost 48 hours earlier.
So, to begin at the beginning, which is where all good odysseys begin, we were flying standby, courtesy of Marianne's aunt, who used to be a United Airlines employee and scored these transferable flight privileges as part of her severance. All of our travel here (and elsewhere) has been predicated on this fact, for those who have wondered how a lowly artist and a school nurse can afford to take off for weeks on these journeys.
In the beginning, our passes were like vouchers, usable by anyone, which allowed us to do our first trip here with all four kids in 2007. After United merged with Continental Airlines, they changed the passes to two designated flyers who can use the passes unlimited for each year they are assigned. Fortunately for us (but not for our kids), we are the travelers of choice. Unfortunately, over the past few years, as anyone who travels a lot will confirm, computer booking of flights has become wayyyyy more efficient, with oversold flights becoming the norm, and making it more and more difficult for standby flyers to get on. When we took the kids with us in '07, we got bumped up to first class for about 75% of our vouchers! Sadly, I can tell you that does not happen anymore! Instead what we encounter has been longer queues, longer waits in airports (like our 30 hour stint last month trying to get to DC!) or getting creative with routing, as we did this time.
Having struck out on 3 consecutive flights to DC this time, (the hardest part is getting to the east coast, where the loads to Europe are easier) we decided to take an available flight to England and then pop for a short flight to Rome, which would keep us more or less on schedule. The flight from England to Rome was only $150, though the flight left from Luton Airport, which is an hour long bus ride from Heathrow, but the schedule worked out and we made the connections just fine. The flight down here on Easy Air is a true bus ride, on the most bare bones airplane I've ever encountered- no entertainment, no free drinks, the seats did not even recline! But hey, we got here, got to town and got to our friend's house in the Campo di Fiori neighborhood, and only lost one item (Marianne's scarf) in transit.
Today we are just hanging around and recovering, picking up our friends' daughter from school- I love being somewhere and doing normal things! Tomorrow we'll catch an early train down to Lecce, in the heel of the boot, for a conference I will be attending with fellow artists of the ornamental kind. Out the window we can hear the hubbub of the farmers market in the piazza, motos buzzing by, and the bits of conversation inevitably ending in "ciao! ciao ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!"
Ahhhhh, Italia!
Well, now's as good a time as any to get started again, I guess, having just arrived in the magic kingdom (Italy, NOT Disneyland!) for my fourth time. It's funny; my heritage is German and Scots Irish, and a little French tossed in on the side, but I feel like this is where I belong. The sights, the sounds, the smells (well, mostly) and the food all stir my blood. Just flying over it last night on the way in, catching a glimpse of the Colosseum and the Wedding Cake (the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele) gave me such a thrill, and not just because it was the end of another standby odyssey that began almost 48 hours earlier.
So, to begin at the beginning, which is where all good odysseys begin, we were flying standby, courtesy of Marianne's aunt, who used to be a United Airlines employee and scored these transferable flight privileges as part of her severance. All of our travel here (and elsewhere) has been predicated on this fact, for those who have wondered how a lowly artist and a school nurse can afford to take off for weeks on these journeys.
In the beginning, our passes were like vouchers, usable by anyone, which allowed us to do our first trip here with all four kids in 2007. After United merged with Continental Airlines, they changed the passes to two designated flyers who can use the passes unlimited for each year they are assigned. Fortunately for us (but not for our kids), we are the travelers of choice. Unfortunately, over the past few years, as anyone who travels a lot will confirm, computer booking of flights has become wayyyyy more efficient, with oversold flights becoming the norm, and making it more and more difficult for standby flyers to get on. When we took the kids with us in '07, we got bumped up to first class for about 75% of our vouchers! Sadly, I can tell you that does not happen anymore! Instead what we encounter has been longer queues, longer waits in airports (like our 30 hour stint last month trying to get to DC!) or getting creative with routing, as we did this time.
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| Bus queue at Heathrow to get to Luton Airport- an hour north. |
Having struck out on 3 consecutive flights to DC this time, (the hardest part is getting to the east coast, where the loads to Europe are easier) we decided to take an available flight to England and then pop for a short flight to Rome, which would keep us more or less on schedule. The flight from England to Rome was only $150, though the flight left from Luton Airport, which is an hour long bus ride from Heathrow, but the schedule worked out and we made the connections just fine. The flight down here on Easy Air is a true bus ride, on the most bare bones airplane I've ever encountered- no entertainment, no free drinks, the seats did not even recline! But hey, we got here, got to town and got to our friend's house in the Campo di Fiori neighborhood, and only lost one item (Marianne's scarf) in transit.
Today we are just hanging around and recovering, picking up our friends' daughter from school- I love being somewhere and doing normal things! Tomorrow we'll catch an early train down to Lecce, in the heel of the boot, for a conference I will be attending with fellow artists of the ornamental kind. Out the window we can hear the hubbub of the farmers market in the piazza, motos buzzing by, and the bits of conversation inevitably ending in "ciao! ciao ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!"
Ahhhhh, Italia!
Another odyssey! Can't wait to see all of your photos and comments. Thanks Steve for sharing again.
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