Anyway, (hubby) Ricky and I left Vancouver on the 22nd of September for our tour with Insight Vacations. I woke up early in order to finish last-minute packing, and to check my emails one last time. Then around noontime, my brother and sis-in-law, Mario and Ola, picked us up to drive us to the airport because everyone else was working that day, it being a Wednesday. Since it was still early and our flight wasn’t till 6pm, we decided to have lunch at Aberdeen Centre in Richmond. We really enjoyed our meal so much that both Mario and Ola agreed that it was their best meal ever. That was our way of saying “grazie” for taking us to the airport.
Checking in with British Airways was a breeze; and since it was still early, Ricky and I strolled around Vancouver International Airport (YVR), snapping shots here and there, to remind ourselves how beautiful YVR really is. [Nah….. just to show you how camera freaks we really are.] (haha)
Our flight, which departed ahead of schedule, was a 9-hour flight to London Heathrow with a layover of 3 hours. It was a turbulent flight, especially over Greenland, so I decided to entertain myself by watching the movies “Sex and the City 2” starring ‘you know who’; and “The Back-up Plan” starring Jennifer Lopez. Both were ‘chick flicks’ and were good enough to pass the time.
Since the plane departed ahead of schedule, it touched down at London Heathrow also ahead of schedule. One good thing about flying with British Airways if you’re having a layover in London is that Terminal 5 is exclusively for the use of British Airways flights, and therefore, you don’t need to transfer from one terminal to another. Having said that, however, Terminal 5 is so huge that you still need to take the train to go to the gates. That’s how huge it is! But since it has been newly constructed, everything is ultra modern and spiffy. They even accept all kinds of currency when you buy food, so we didn’t have to exchange our dollars into pounds just to get something to eat. Isn’t that convenient?
We really had an easy trip, with no hiccups, until we were informed that our flight to Rome has been delayed for half an hour. I was kind of apprehensive because I didn’t want to miss our 1st optional tour that night, which was the “Illumination Tour of Rome”. But since our flight has been delayed, I resigned myself to the fact that we weren’t going anywhere that night. More so when we were informed by the pilot that our flight would take a little bit longer because the plane had to avoid flying over Paris due to the strike. Ayayay!!!
Anyhow, I decided to enjoy the rest of the flight by appreciating the food laid out before us. It was yummy! Ricky slept all the way from London to Rome so he didn’t get a chance to eat dinner.
The plane finally touched down at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci (Fiumicino) Airport at 6:30 pm. My first impression of the airport was that it was old and chaotic. Nevertheless, I was genuinely excited!!!
Getting through customs was a breeze. If you ever wanted to see someone who appears to either hate his job or totally bored with the whole process, wait until you see these guys. With absolutely no conversation, the customs officer just received my passport with hardly a look at me and my passport, and then threw the passport back at me. I could have been a terrorist and he wouldn’t even have cared. (haha) Welcome to Italy!
And then the mayhem started. Even the Italians are confused which carousel to use for us to pick up our luggage. The sign says carousel #5 for the flight we were on, and then the announcement came that our luggage will be at carousel #6, and yet both carousels were spitting out pieces of luggage from the same flight. So Ricky stationed himself at #6 while I kept a close watch on #5. haha - you gotta love Italy!!!
After waiting for what seemed like eternity, our 2 pieces of luggage finally made an appearance, after which we went to look for our tour representative. The two of us were then loaded onto a 9-passenger van and headed to our hotel. Everything you read about Italian drivers is true. And whatever you've heard about them, you double its severity and then multiply by 10. It's something you could never imagine unless you saw it for yourself. This driver of ours tried to attach himself to the bumper of the car ahead of him and was taking runs at other cars. Dios mio! I felt like I was on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in Disney World. I thought the drivers in New York were notably bad, but this was an entirely new class of transportation unto itself. Although many of the roads in the cities have lanes, there are usually no lines to distinguish them so it is total vehicular anarchy. Italians seem to use a two-lane highway for 3 across. And cutting other drivers off wasn't an exception -- it was the established rule! Motor scooters were everywhere and would become the most common sight throughout our stay in Italy. So - watching our van driver participate in this chaos was unnerving on one hand, and entertaining on the other.
Word of advice: If you're planning on going to Italy on your own, or you otherwise want to rent a car to get around, particularly in the cities, think again. You're better off driving south on a northbound interstate highway as your chances for survival are far greater.
Anyhow, we finally arrived at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rome, thankfully in one piece. Regrettably, we had missed the welcome drink and illumination tour. After checking in, the desk clerk at the hotel directed me to Insight’s bulletin board to get the details for the following day.
After taking note of the wake-up call and breakfast time, we settled into our room. Since I was exhausted with no sleep for almost 24 hours, I fell asleep without having any dinner. And since Ricky was starving, he ate the sandwich served on the plane and subsequently fell asleep. My hunger pangs woke me up at 2am because it was almost dinner time back home. So I ate some granola bars to keep my hunger pangs at bay and went back to sleep. Woke up at 5am and eagerly prepared for the 1st official day of our tour.
Somehow, I manage to get up earlier on vacations than I do when I have to work. I prefer a leisurely breakfast rather than rushing through things in the morning. When people go on Daylight Savings Time, they set their clocks ahead an hour and pretend it’s an hour later, even though it isn’t; therefore, the same concept applies on another continent. How does my body know whether it’s 6:00 or 7:00? So, I figure, I might as well get up early.
The breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Hotel was probably the best one on the tour. I read on the forum that you should ask for cappuccino if you want one, so that’s what I did during the course of the tour. I always started my day with a cuppa of cappuccino and usually ended it with a gelato. I tell you - it was paradise on earth!!!
And since we finished breakfast early, we utilized our “waiting time” to have some snapshots of the hotel. Can you tell we’re really camera freaks? (haha)
We then met our tour director, Shona, who gave us our luggage tags. She was amazing! She has a wealth of historical knowledge that she freely shared, along with both interesting and amusing anecdotes. She always remained upbeat and she was a wealth of knowledge on just about everything and anything we saw.
Our tour bus driver, Marco, was a world-class driver and an absolute genius in handling that monstrous vehicle. Later in the tour, he would draw many cheers from the group with his ability to manage the most challenging of narrow winding roads and tight little turns. A graduate of the School of Driving Assertively in Traffic Hell, he continued to amaze us with his ability to get a gigantically huge bus into a space the size of a tuna can. He spoke no English and we never spoke a word to each other, other than "buon giorno" “grazie” and “buona sera”. And given some of the hairpin turns on 400-foot cliffs we were later to traverse in Sorrento, I can honestly say I never felt nervous with Marco at the helm. He was with a bus what Michelangelo was with a chisel.
The group of people on the tour, as I came to know later, was super. Everyone seemed quite compatible, and much mingling took place among the various travelers. There were 40 of us in the group which included people from the USA, Canada and Australia.
Postscript: The Belpaese (Beautiful Country) is one of the single greatest repositories of sensorial pleasures on earth. From art to food, from stunning and varied countryside to flamboyant fashion, Italy has it all. With 44 sites, Italy has more Unesco World Heritage sites than any other country on earth. Its great città d’arte (cities of art), like Rome, Venice and Florence, have been attracting visitors for centuries, and with good reason. But as much as all of these, a trip to Italy is about lapping up the lifestyle. It’s about idling over a coffee at a streetside cafe or lingering over a long lunch in the hot Mediterranean sun. It is simply awesome!
….to be continued
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