Last year the theme I lived my life by was “The year of travel.” My first big trip was to Italy with my immediate family. I am very lucky. My parents decided they wanted to go to Italy and they wanted to take me and my brother, which was very exciting for us because there is no way we could afford a trip like this without our generous parents helping us out.
A year ago today my dad, mom, brother and I were at the airport as the sun came up to catch our 6:25am flight. Our flights were supposed to take us from Reno to Salt Lake City, then to Chicago and in Chicago we would get on an Alitalia flight to Rome, Italy.
Our flight troubles started when we left Salt Lake City about a half hour late. By the time we got to Chicago and reached the desk where we were supposed to check in for our flight to Italy the Alitalia reps told us we missed our flight. This really irked us because the people in line right before us were on the same plane from Salt Lake City and they somehow miraculously made the Italy flight that we somehow missed. The Alitalia staff was rude and not friendly at all so instead of them trying to help us they handed us off to the folks at Air India. This inconvenience turned out to be our blessing.
 |
| Example of the Air India uniforms |
To make up for the mistake the airline put us on Air India to Germany and then in Germany we caught a connector flight to Rome. We were really mad but once we got on the Air India plane everything was great. Air India is one of the nicest airlines I have ever flown. The seats were practically brand new, everything was clean, the staff was very nice including the guy at the ticket desk who was hilarious, the female flight attendants wore beautiful dresses and the male attendants wore nice suits. The other passengers flying Air India were the most polite and well-dressed people I have ever flown with, it made me feel like a “sloppy American”. At first I was scared because there were a lot of children and we all know kids don’t do well on transatlantic flights but these kids were very well behaved. I don’t remember one of them crying or being upset during the flight. This was the best flight I have ever taken; it made me realize how much customer service the American airlines lack. If I ever get the chance again I will fly India Air because of their great service.
So we arrived in Frankfurt Germany, which became a little bit of a family joke. Dad always wanted to go to Germany and I always want more stamps on my passport so we enjoyed our short layover at the Frankfurt Airport. We especially enjoyed the customs agent that kept stamping passports without reading them and without changing the date on his stamp while the other customs agent was practically interrogating everyone that was in his line especially the old folks, you’ve got to watch out for the old folks that travel they are nothing but trouble. After enjoying some time at the airport we got on another plane and we were off to Rome. |
| View over Germany |
When we arrived at the Rome airport we arrived almost at the same time as the people on the Alitalia flight we were originally supposed to be on. They got stuck on the tarmac due to mechanical problems so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise when we got bumped from our original flight. We arrived in Rome on 5-16-10 where we found our Globus tour group and we began our big Italian adventure.
For my next few blogs I will be rehashing my trip as best as I can remember it. Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment