Time to go home. Sigh. We are up and organizing, eating (great spread as usual) and packed. Our 3 hour drive to Rome is really easy – all Autostrada all the way – even the ring road is easy. We are timing our drive so that we can arrive on the Appia Antica at 12:30 for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants: Hosteria Antica Roma, run by Paolo Magnanimi and his family. Everything works perfectly – including telling the police who have blocked the road that we are going to the restaurant (it’s Sunday and you can’t drive on most of the Appia Antica – thus the blockade). We manage to squeeze our little car through the stone archway and into the little courtyard outside the restaurant without incident and we are here!
Paolo greets us in his gregarious style and seats us outside in the courtyard – because it’s too hot to sit in the interior courtyard among the ruins there. We chat amiably and catch up on Paolo’s happenings, and listen to his history and legends as he imparts his knowledge onto other diners. We dig into our special cheese (after the story of how it was created) and bread and move on to Ed’s suckling pig and my Patina Cotidiana (the special ancient Roman lasagna I get every time). Even though we’re full, we still save room for Paolo’s Tiramisu which is one of the best we’ve ever had.
This is the perfect way to spend our last day in Italy – relaxing, easy, just the right amount of scheduling and time before we fly out at 8:30 for our quick overnight in Dusseldorf. After a few hours, we bid Paolo ciao – with the promise to see him again when we are back in October.
Out in the car, we let Alice lead us to the airport (frighteningly taking us another way that is more through the city than on the ring road). Ok, we’ll trust her this time – at least until we see the airport directional signs.
We need gas, of course, and we are traveling down a very large, broad avenue that is filled with small stations. We stop at one and the attendant says we need cash. Ok, we have that. No, it seems you must use his cash machine. Ed keeps saying, we already have cash. No, you must use the machine. Ummm, no. And then he says, I help you, you pay me. Nope – that’s it – out of here. As we continue down the avenue, we see that all these gas stations are the same, they all have the cash machines and a single person manning the station “helping” you. What a scam!
We find a “real” station as we head toward the Autostrada leading to the airport, fill up and very successfully navigate our way into the Hertz parking deck. Car turned in, bags stacked, we head into the terminal, only to find (as we suspected) that it’s way too early to check in. The sweet airline guy tells us if we give him our bags now we will never see them again! Funny! But, the sweet airline guy also fixes our tickets (which for some reason were mixed up and wouldn’t allow us to select seats or check in online), and gives us seats on both flights. So all is good – only 4 more hours until our flight!
We wait our appointed time, head back down to the counter, stand in line, check in, dump our bags (which make it under the 23K weight limit – phew) and head back up to the restaurant for a dinner/snack. We both get porchetta panini – oh yum! It’s the real deal, even if it’s not straight off a truck on the side of the road. So, so good! I can’t finish all of mine, so I pop it in a zip lock back and save it for later. It’s that good!
Back downstairs, through security, on to the gate and another line. The plane is really late, bummer, we only have a few hours to sleep in Dusseldorf anyway, and as the plane is later and later, we’re going to be getting less and less. We finally board about an hour late (with no announcements whatsoever letting us know what is going on). The pilot actually tells us what happened as he is giving us our flight info – they were held up by a shortage of air traffic controllers somewhere along the route – which then backed up everything. We’re hoping this doesn’t affect us any further as it’s pushing 11PM now for our arrival time. Ick.
As it turns out, the flight goes off without a hitch, and we arrive at the Avidon hotel by 11:15. Smooth. And what a hotel! It’s beautiful and updated, the room is huge and well appointed, there is a bar that is open 24 hours – great find. It’s just a shame we are only here to sleep! After we dump our bags, we head back down to the bar, where the night reception guy becomes our bartender as well! Ed gets his beer, while I am relegated to a Gallo Chardonnay. Really! We are in Germany and they do not have any German whites by the glass! What is with that????? Our desk clerk/bartender loosens up once we make silly comments about the wine selection and while we never get his name, shame on us, we have a great time sitting at the bar chatting with him.
The next morning, he’s still on duty, so we talk some more over cappuccino and coffee. He makes sure we get our cab, and is just so truly sincere and sweet as we say goodbye. If we are ever back here to stay, this will be the place for certain.
Airport, gate, plane, oh the babies! Thank heavens this is a day flight. In just the 3 rows around us there are 7 kids varying from 8 months to 4 years? Oh, we are so not happy. But as it turns out, they really aren’t too terribly bad. There was one semi-screamer, but we manage to tune most of it out by watching movies (We Bought a Zoo – very, very cute!) and I did fall asleep for a few hours (yeah, again, surprise!).
Good flight, decent food, early arrival, through passport control and customs and out into the Miami heat pretty quickly. Our shuttle arrives on schedule, and we are in our car and heading out of Ft. Lauderdale by 2:15. Pretty well seamless.
We make it St. Augustine, grab dinner then hit the hay so we can be on our way early Tuesday and back home before lunch. A very, very long day, but surprisingly not too terrible. We’re tired, but not crazy tired. It was a good travel day and a great trip! We’re ready to do it again – of course!
No comments:
Post a Comment