Arrival in Rome

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  Rome, Lazio, Italy
Thursday, August 14, 2008

Before we get to the not-fun part, I'll wrap up Nottingham. After my last entry, there was much more relaxing, much more film (and TV and Olympics) and a great trip yesterday to another gorgeous (and interesting!) manor house and a beautiful pub that's been built in a new church. One of the films Jon and Nick showed Pedro and I was called The Wicker Man. I'd never heard of it before, but it's supposedly a well-known British horror movie that was remade recently (to poor results) with Nicolas Cage. Despite its age, the film held up incredibly well and I quite enjoyed it.

Overall, I've had a fantastic time with Nick and Jon. They were both incredible hosts, extremely generous, and some of the best people I have had the fortune to meet on this trip. I'll definitely be keeping in contact with them and if I get into a U.K. university for grad school I'm sure there will be more visits as well.

Now, for the rough part. I'm in Rome, I'm safe, and I have all my luggage, but I'll never be flying RyanAir again, if I can reasonably help it. I'd rather pay the extra money and experience much more standard and reasonable treatment.

I arrived at the airport (thanks to a very early car ride from Nick and Jon, which I am extremely grateful for) with 1.5-2 hours to spare. There were 2 long queues to check out for my flight, as self-check-in was not available. After getting to the front of the queue with 45 minutes until my flight left, I was informed I could not take my backpacks as carry-on items. My large one was too big and only one item was allowed. In the past 5 weeks, I've been on 6 flights with 4 different airlines and not once have I experienced this. Obviously this caught me completely off-guard, so I had to step out of the queue and wrap my backpack in its case so the straps wouldn't get caught in anything.

After arranging my bag, a couple going through a similar issue as myself were speaking to the attendant (by this point we were the last ones left) and I had to wait for them to finish before I gave her my bag and she then told me it would cost me £16 to check it. This meant I needed to get a slip of paper from her, go to another queue, pay the £16 (again, ridiculous!), and return to get my boarding pass. After all that, I ran to security because, by this point, my flight had already been boarding for 10 minutes! I bolted to security, begged people to let me pass ahead of them in line, and made it in time for the final boarding call. The amount of unexpected stress I went through was definitely not worth it and, if I can help it, I will not be travelling with that company again.

Phew.

Okay, so now I'm in Rome and, after waiting to check in (passing the time by surfing the 'net and having pizza), I am really excited to wrap this entry up, go to my room, and nap. Wow, do I ever need sleep. I have to say that the staff here, however, have been incredibly friendly and accommodating, so yay!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll take some time to upload my pics and vids from the past little while, so stay tuned for that. Woo!

-Justen