All the Way Home

Final chapter from Laura. Pictures will be forthcoming.

---

Before dawn on Saturday morning we woke up and dragged our suitcases out to the hotel lobby. To our surprise we found a complete breakfast set up for us even though breakfast wouldn't be served for another few hours. The family that ran the hotel had put out food for all three of us, including 3 hard boiled eggs (as we had each been eating a hard boiled egg for breakfast all week) It was such a kind and thoughtful gesture, we hadn't expected it but we certainly appreciated it. The Lombardi family that runs Hotel Casci were really wonderful.

Our cab ride to the airport was quiet and quick, the city was still mostly asleep. I was feeling pretty confident that we were in for a much easier trip home than the trip out had been. As we were about to check our luggage, the ticket agent told us that we needed a paper ticket for Samuel (something we hadn't needed for the flight from Rome to Florence) and due to a mistake we also lacked the paper for Samuel for the transatlantic flight. It was fairly simple to get the paper ticket for the Florence to Rome leg of our journey but we could not address the lack of the other ticket until we arrived in Rome.

The woman checking us in became fairly hostile and then refused to check our luggage farther than Rome since Samuel didn't have a ticket showing he was leaving Italy. Then she refused to let us take one of our carry on bags on board (even though it wasn't too big) and she tried to make us check our stroller too. This woman was truly the only unpleasant and unhelpful person we dealt with during our whole time in Italy.

We managed to gate check our stroller but in Rome due to a problem at the plane we were waiting for our stroller on the tarmac for over 30 minutes. We then claimed all our luggage and pulled it across the airport.

We found nice people to help us at the US Air counter (it was because of a US Air mistake that we didn't have a ticket for Samuel) The flight home was long but not terribly unpleasant. We even got to visit with Inger, a cheerful lady from PA who had been on our flight out and spent the week in Rome.

The Philadelphia Airport was nothing but hassles, claiming our baggage from customs, checking our baggage, having to clear security and somehow not missing our flight to Ithaca for which we were quite late.

We arrived in Ithaca to find our luggage no longer with us (the only airport all day where we hadn't seen our luggage). We filed our lost luggage claim and headed home and collapsed.

It was a great trip, all in all. 

Posted by Matt on 4/21/2005 01:26:00 AM