Sicily - late March Emilia-Romagna - early April |
Travel and Arrival (and cell phone info)March 19, 2008. After saving my money for a year or so, I was finally ready for my trip to Italy. This trip had come about because my friend Dawn in Alaska had won some travel money in a travel agent contest and had asked me to go along. Our plans changed many, many times, but finally we were on our way. Our trip across the world was long but also included some nice surprises for those of us used to flying only within the U.S. recently. For one thing, there's food! Free and lots of it. And free beer and wine, don't know about cocktails. Our pilot, fondly known as Capt. Harmonica, played us a tune and sang us a song about the great adventure we were embarking on together and away we flew--across the expanse of Canada. Not quite over the pole, but very satisfying views of the frozen north and, eventually, Hudson Bay. Almost immediately after take-off we were served dinner, a bit later a snack, then shortly before we landed they served a little fast-food breakfast at 6:00 am Amsterdam time. We were not fooled though, even the babies knew it was only ten o'clock at night. Not many people slept, but we had plenty of entertainment. Mostly is was one or more of the four or five babies crying--as a team they managed to cover all nine hours quite nicely. The planned entertainment, though, on this large NW Airlines flight was from the individual entertainment center at your seat. We had 39 movies to choose from; if you planned carefully you could watch four or five of them before we landed; 37 were U.S. movies with various sub-titling; two were Indian because the plane was going on to Mumbai. Dawn watched Juno and I watched Enchanted. There were also short subjects, sports, Nickelodeon, music, games, alone or interactive (Trivia against the other passengers anyone?). And maybe best, a fairly rudimentary set of information about approximately where the plane was, how far we'd come, speed, whether we had a tail wind, what time it was expected to be when we landed, etc. I've often thought that people would pay money to be able to call up information about what they're flying over--what town is that? what lake? what mountain? And this seems to be a start. I hope they get it done before I'm through flying. Flying into Amsterdam was illuminating. We all know it's about half water, but it's hard to describe how precarious it all seems from the air. As if one good rainfall could inundate everything. But, as I said to Dawn, it doesn't look like it rains there, it looks like it oozes. The red rooftops were pretty and I'm sure some of the properties along the canals and ponds were quite lovely places to live, although almost everyone appears to live in large apartment buildings. Then on to Rome (light lunch of pasta salad)--a flight above a European overcast that cleared enough over the Alps for me to get a glimpse. Or maybe they're just higher than the weather. Anyway I was happy. Amsterdam and Rome were two big, impersonal airports in a row, pretty much like home, although we
We finally land in Catania (after another small snack). Our ride is not there, we are exhausted. Dawn has been travelling (and mostly awake) for something like 36 hours and can barely stand. I can't get the cell phone to work* and we're about to give up and start crying when Carmelo arrives muttering about the traffic. He seems to have forgotten that it's the day before Good Friday. And "traffic" appears to be his only English word, embellished with hand-waving and eye-rolling. But we don't care, he takes us in hand, drives us by roadsides lined with wildflowers, groves of ripe oranges and lemons and groves and groves of olive trees.We weren't too tired to be thoroughly frightened by Italian driving, but he delivered us safely about an hour later to Massimo, our rental agent in Syracuse, out on the island of Ortygia. The apartment seems fine. We wash up, throw some clothes around and go out to the corner bar cum gelato/panini shop and have a tomato panino, three glasses of house white (shared) and a gelato each and go home (NOT getting lost) to sleep like the dead for 13 hours. Then we begin exploring. * Later, after I figured out how to turn the dang phone on, all was well. I had bought an old unlocked cell phone with the right frequencies, but without a SIMM card for about $30 in Portland; purchased the SIMM card at the Rome airport for about 15 euros and we were set with a phone from which we could call anywhere in Italy AND we had an Italian phone number. Very handy when negotiating vacancies, prices etc. Well, IF the person on the other end speaks any English. I think I put about 30 euros more into the phone for additional minutes during the 2-1/2 months. If anyone wants to borrow the phone, or needs more detail, just let me know.
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