Traveling internationally again so soon after my last trip had me wondering, oh gosh, had I overbooked myself? But thoughts of being in Italy again in whatever circumstance or season, made me think, yes it is all worth it. So I pushed through the last 2.5 weeks of getting caught up at home and at work and was ready to board that plane, arriving at the airport 2 hours before departure.
I caught up with Carla (who had gotten there earlier) past security and we had one last meal of burgers before we boarded the flight. We had booked duo seats on the upper deck. It was the next best thing as premium economy, only about $700 cheaper for each seat and still felt tucked away on the top smaller deck vs. being on the lower deck with a sea of economy seating.
They boarded us on time, but then we waited and waited and waited. Apparently the ‘ice machine’ on board was broken and they had to wait for ice to come to the plane. We were laughing picturing someone trying to make a 7-11 run and coming back with bags of ice to load on to the plane. It was all very odd to be held up one hour for ice, when the whole flight, we didn’t see one ice cube.
The first leg of the flight was to Paris and took 10 hours. About halfway through, I got up to stretch my legs and told myself ‘you can do this, only 5 more hours.’ We both tried to sleep – but really it is so hard to sleep upright in a seat that only tilts back 10 degrees. 2 hours before landing they served us food again and we were pretty much up from then on. Our biggest observation was a flight attendant serving our part of the plane. She was tall, very skinny in tight pants and a crop hair cut with sleek black hair. The memorable thing about her was her eyes, she looked continually wide-eyed or the look you might have if you had just stuck your finger in a light socket. She also had a ‘security’ badge on her uniform. We figured that was a good job for her as with her extra attention to vision, she wouldn’t miss a thing.
As we approached Paris airport, it was completely fogged in. And I mean completely. The kind of fog where you can’t see inches from your face. The French pilot, who always sounded completely bored when we spoke to us over the speaker, told us they would be landing with instrumentation technology only but that we would all need to shut off our phones, even the phones in airplane mode.
I had just purchased an iPhoneXs a few days before and actually didn’t know how to power down my phone. The old way didn’t work anymore. So I pressed the Siri button and said, ‘Siri, power down my phone.’ She responded really loud, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I don’t know how.’ When she said that, I don’t know why, but we started laughing so hard. We coudn’t stop laughing. Maybe it was because I didn’t want anyone to know I was asking my phone how to power down my phone and the response was so loud or because we were half worried my lone phone staying on during the ‘instrumentation only’ landing would cause challenges for the pilot. Thankfully, all was well, and it was the softest and smoothest landing I could remember in a long time. For such a big bird, it is amazing how gently they can touch down.
We originally had a two hour layover in Paris, which was now down to just one hour and the plane literally taxi’d for 30 minutes after we landed before pulling into a gate. By the time we got to our gate, we had 30 minutes to get to our next flight, which seemed impossible and was impossible. The Paris airport is massive and passing through from one terminal to the other involved taking a train and running what felt like the length of 10 football fields.
We arrived huffing and puffing at our gate 5 minutes before scheduled take-off. Absolutely no time for bathroom breaks, coffees, or a leisurely stroll. They make you pass through an electronic security screening again and passport control. Thankfully, there were no summer crowds so that process went very quickly.
Once we arrived at our gate, there were many other out of breath travelers that had come from our connection. The guy checking our ticket said – don’t worry, you have time. I asked about our luggage, was there any chance, if we had to run here to this terminal, that our luggage would make it. He looked at his iPad and checked a few things and said, oh yes, no problem, your luggage will make it, with the most confident assurance. He said, this flight will be delayed also because of the fog, your luggage will make ti. With those words we boarded the flight,
This plane was a smaller plane, like a Southwest airplane with 3 and 3 seats on each side and an aisle in between. I had booked us an aisle and window seat hoping no one booked the middle seat. This has worked for me in the past. However, it was NOT to be on this flight. As we headed down the row, Carla was first to see the gentlemen in our middle seat. Gina, my friend how works for Southwest tells me that they call these travelers ‘COS’ fliers. Customers of Size. Oh boy. This guy was no less than 300 pounds with about 250 of it in his stomach. He had a big ol’ grin and Carla just looked at me wondering, oh boy, what do we do? We couldn’t picture ourselves on either side of this mountain.
I get up there and say with a smile ‘Hi, how about you move to the window? I wanted him to wedge himself as far against that window as possible so we woundn’t feel to cramped . I was the smaller of Carla and me and took the middle seat. Still, he was half in my seat and was ‘man-spreading’ that is where a man spreads his legs when seated as broadly as possible so his legs were also halfway in my row This flight was only going to be less than two hours and I thought, okay, I can be gracious and do this.
He immediately wanted to jump into conversation with me and I was thinking, oh gosh, please no, I haven’t slept all night, I can’t be squished AND chat with you for the next 2 hours. He was from Mississippi and here with his family, who were scattered through the plane. His granddaughter was even right behind us, I was wondering, why didn’t they sit with him, then realized from my cramped posture why they picked other rows.
Thankfully, I popped my headphones in to listen to music and so he would quit talking to me asking me questions like ‘What mountain range are we flyin over?’ I was thinking, ‘Huh? I am American like you, I have no idea.’ But then responded, without really being sure but somewhat sure, taking out my ear buds and said, ‘Those are the Swiss Alps,’ then slipped them back into my ears so he would quit trying to engage with me. I was too tired. I couldn’t even look at Carla because, every time we made eye contact we would start laughing without saying a word, and they guy would look at me wondering what we were laughing at, and I would say, ‘I am so sorry, we are tired, and we have the giggles. You know how girls are, and he would nod as if to say, ah, yes.
We finally landed in Florence, thrilled to be there and headed out of the back of the plane. We had to exit the steps of the plane vs. a jet-bridge. I helped an old Italian woman with her luggage. She was the same woman that thought Carla was Italian when we boarded and was speaking to her in Italian telling her she could move her jacket to put her backpack in the overhead. Carla didn’t understand her at the time and a man that spoke Italian and English said, ‘She thinks you are Italian,’ and he translated what she was saying to Carla. This was also part of the raucous when we boarded, that made us have the giggles as we flew to Florence.
We got to baggage claim and waited for our bags expectantly. You alway wonder when you fly, especially theses long distances, will my bags make it? And with our tight connection, we were a little worried, but not too worried because of the gate agent who had assured us we would be fine. So we waited, and waited, and waited….and our baggage never arrived. It was us and all of the folks that had our tight connection at the lost and found.
After filling out several rounds of paperwork they said our luggage was still in Paris and they would deliver it some time the next day. Thank goodness we both had packed our PJs, and extra pair of clothes, and all of our toiletries and make-up in our carry-on. We would be fine for one night at least and hoped they would in fact deliver our bags the next morning before noon.
We went out and found the taxi-stand and took a taxi to the St. Regis. I had booked this hotel on very little points through my Marriott Rewards program which had just merged with other hotel brands. Our taxi-driver charged us $22 Euro to drive us to the hotel and I promise you could not stop yawning. At one point I said, ‘Hmm, someone is tired!’ He just laughed.
When we arrived a the St. Regis, it was literally like a palace. I had no idea it would be this nice. They sat us down at a desk where the manager took us through everything. He let us know they had upgraded us to a 2 bedroom/2 bath suite (oh the joys of traveling off-season), and that we had been assigned a personal butler named, Beatrice. We were thinking, ‘What? This all feels like a dream!’
They took us to our suite and we literally felt like Queen Elizabeth in this room. Our butler said she would be brining us up cappuccinos and waters on a silver tray and reminded us that we could have anything pressed we liked. We kind of laughed as we had no luggage. We asked for her to make us a reservation at one of my favorite restaurants Trattoria Gobbi 13. Amazingly it was literally only 1.5 blocks from where we were staying. We wanted a 6pm reservation, but she said in her broken English, ‘In Italy, the earliest we consider to have dinner is 7:30pm.’ I said, ‘Oh of course, 7:30pm will be fine.’
So after drinking our coffees and unpacking what we could we headed down there around 7:25pm. They seated us in the restaurant between two really stiff tables of two that felt like we were dining with them but not welcome. The 2 on our right were 2 stone-faced Japanese girls who acted annoyed when we sat down and proceeded to speak in the loudest Japanese on record. The two on our left were to tight-lipped old American men who also gave us the stink eye. I tried to look at Carla and convince her, ‘Really, this is a fun place.”
The restaurant filled up quickly and soon the people next us us didn’t matter as the noise levels in the restaurant rose. And really after a glass of wine, you don’t care who is on your right or left, you just remember you are in Italy and the food in front of you is amazing on every level and you keep pinching yourself that you are here.
After dinner, I told her we should walk a bit as I wanted her to go see the Duomo lit up at night and she wanted to try her first gelato. So we walked 15 minutes to Duomo along the narrow cobblestone streets and Carla kept saying, ‘I feel like I am on a movie set, this doesn’t seem real.’ Then she had a chocolate gelato and I’m pretty sure her eyes rolled back into her head, as she couldn’t believe what she was tasting. I felt like I was showing a child Disneyland for the first time and it was pretty wonderful to experience Carla’s glee. I wasn’t even having gelato, but felt like I was on this night.
We went back to the room, enjoyed hot showers in our own Queen bathroom and our fresh PJs and again kept saying, ‘Wow, we feel like queens, hopefully our luggage shows up in the morning!’ With that, we headed off to well deserved sleep in our Royal beds.
