All Roams lead to Rome

The Colosseo:  where the lions learned to love Christians 

All roads lead to Rome.   But not all airlines, apparently.

Yes, those are oranges on that tree!

We have made it to Rome and find ourselves tucked away nicely in a pleasant B&B down a back alley somewhere deep in the city.  It took a while to get here and Telen was unusually fuzzyheaded by the time we arrived.   I was fuzzyheaded too but, in my case, being fuzzyheaded is a normal thing on many levels.

Telen in her element: La Cucina

The flight from Victoria–Vancouver-Frankfurt went off without a hitch and the gentleman at the Air Canada desk was kind enough to check our bags all the way through to Rome.  That was just weird.   We reckoned that, since it was April 1, it was a trick.  It wasn’t.  On our way to the airport our daughter did play a trick on us by telling us that the steering wheel was stuck and we went around the roundabout about a dozen times.  In doing so, I suspect, we may have crossed into an alternate universe where Air Canada actually gives you customer service. 

I will have to speak to Steven Hawking about this.

Our room in La Bella Sosta

It is a good thing our bags were checked through to Rome because we had not taken into account Frankfurt Airport.  The guy who designed the airport was a real wiener.  Either that or he allowed his child, who had been playing with mazes, and who has anger management issues, do it for him. There are two types of Germans – the ruthlessly efficient Prussians and the fun loving, polka dancing Bavarians.  We expected to enjoy an airport with the Bavarian good humour and the Prussian efficiency.  They got it backwards.   The airport was run with the efficiency of the drunken polka-dancing Bavarians and with the fun and good humour of the Prussians.

We landed at Terminal 2 and our connecting flight was due to leave from Terminal 1.   We had 1 hour to make it there and the only transportation was by foot.  We followed the signs to Terminal 1 and concourse A.  Following the signs, I am sure that we doubled back a few times and once we literally went in a circle and down a corridor that the only sign indicated was to the toilets.  It was dark, smelly and narrow but actually ended up in a bigger labyrinth that was the correct maze. They did have a train between the two terminals that travelled approximately 30 meters at a pace that would have Granny with her walker sighing and looking over her shoulder in frustration.  Poor Telen had to sit me down and have a firm word with me because I kept slamming into the front of the train trying to make it go faster.  

We went around in a circle twice to arrive at security just as boarding was commencing on our flight.  As fate would have it we got into the middle of a group of high-school kids from the States who seemed to think that all you needed to do was put your jacket in the tray for X-Ray and you could carry the rest with you through the magic beeping door.  American airport security is the most stringent I have ever seen – you practically have to strip down to the buff to go through. (Luckily for them they have not gone that far yet. Me going naked through security? No one should have to see that!)  These kids must have gone through their security when they left their country.   And yet, they did not learn from watching the person in front of them, either.   Each one had to be told, individually, to put their carry-on luggage on the trays as well as their jackets, purses, hats, stuffed toys, computers, etc.  It is a good thing I have no hair or I would have ripped it out.  And then I would have no hair…

Sure enough, Telen’s bag got selected for extra examination.  But first they had to check the bag in front but the owner of that bag was not to be found.  Finally one of the young high-school students noticed that his bag was put to one side and wandered over to find out what was happenin’, dude.  Little did that young man know how close he came to grievous bodily harm that day at the hands of a terminally frustrated and severely jet-lagged little Chinese lady.

We got through that bit and went through a door where a man was waiting.  He separated us into Euro and non-Euro passports and took all us non-Euro passport holders through a secret door and told us to follow him.  

I knew this was going to be bad when he got on a bicycle.

We looked like a pack of dogs being led by a little fat Bulldog and a sleek greyhound chasing a cyclist down the concourse.  Telen kept yelling at me “Bad boy! Bad boy!” as I snarled and tried to bite the cyclist’s ankle in frustration.   We were accompanied by the thunderous sound of suitcase wheels and people making bets on the outcome of the race.

We thought we were almost to our gate when the bicycle took a sudden turn and came to a stop in front of … Customs!  There we stood at the yellow line waiting for the customs officer to beckon us forward.   We stood there and stood there and the man in the booth sat there and sat there.   Finally the bicycle man clicked his heels and said, “Go ahead unt zhow him your papers, please” We walked forward and presented our passports to what we thought might be a corpse.  It turned out the cadaver had one reflex left and he unhurriedly stamped our passports and without a single word, gesture or other movement he handed them back.  I think it might have been Germany’s first attempt at an automated Passport device.  

By this time we had so much pent up frustration we literally flew through the doors to get to our gate.  Down some stairs and back the same direction we came.  We literally ran down the concourse and onto the airplane.  Thank goodness they did not decide to get all efficient and close the doors on time!  We sat there in our cattle-class seats trying to catch our breath and thanking the Air Canada man who checked our luggage all the way through to Rome.  We would not have been sitting there if we had had to pick up our luggage in Frankfurt.

We made it to Rome and, surprisingly considering the brief stopover in Frankfurt, so did our luggage.  We arrived at our B&B and were met by a beautiful, smiling young Italian woman who showed us to our spacious room and made us our first Italian coffee.  That coffee made the Frankfurter Airport a distant, vaguely unpleasant memory. 

It is good to be in Italy!

Telen writes:

Oh yes, I felt we definitely have arrived in Italy when the driver for the pre-arranged pick up at the airport showed up in his Armani suit and a Mercedes with a strong smell of expensive aftershave.  He insisted on carrying my luggage in the typical charming Italian way.   I certainly did not protest.  Rand, of course, had to carrying his own luggage as is expected of any self-respecting man. He did not do it with the same suave style, however.

Our car travelled swiftly through the cobblestone streets of Rome, narrowly dodging cars parked on either side of mostly narrow streets.  I caught a glimpse of the world famous Coliseum and the dome of St. Peter’s square in the distance.  Wow!

I have forgotten how delicious Italian coffee is.  After a dinner of insalata caprese and spaghetti with clams, we have truly settled in on our first day in Italy.