I eagerly boarded the plane in Portland for the relatively short flight to Los Angeles just after 11 a.m. the first Wednesday of May. I’d anticipated this day for six years, ever since I retired from teaching, in 2006. When I finally made the reservation last December, I’d started crossing the numbered days off the calendar. At last, today was the day!
Of course, I hadn’t spent the previous 4 ½ months just crossing the days off. I’d also gone to water aerobics class three or four times a week, rode the recumbent bike for at least 30 minutes a day, and actively focused on my nutrition. By the time I boarded the plane, I was 43 pounds lighter than I’d been during the holidays, and as “fit” as I’d been in many years. I was more than ready for my Italy/Austria adventure to begin!
But little did I know that first I’d have to dash (by shuttle bus) from one terminal at LAX to the International terminal, where I’d again have to stand in a long line to go through security, then board the plane to Rome with no time to spare.
Entering the Air Italia plane, I walked through First Class, then Business Class, then behind the curtain to “Economy.” Holy Crap! There’s “Economy,” then there’s the horrid moment when I realized I’d be crammed into steerage with my knees up my nose for the next 12 hours! There was no room at all between my legs and the seat in front of me, and some designer somewhere apparently thought placing a metal electronics box under every third seat was a good idea. And I got the third seat.
Uncomfortable wasn’t the half of it, even when the third person in the row left to sit elsewhere and my travel companion moved over so we could load “the middle seat” with all the carry-ons that should have easily fit into the space below. At this point, a mild case of claustrophobia began to close in on me, and I wondered how I’d survive the flight.
Watching the travel monitor on the screen in back of each seat, I saw our route from LAX to Rome went north… Up over Colorado, Wisconsin, the eastern portion of Canada, directly above Reykjavik, Iceland, and down across Great Britain, France and the Alps! I vowed to take a good look at the globe as soon as I returned home.
Returned home? But that meant I’d eventually have to survive this again to fly back… Oh Lordy! My second vow was to stay “in the moment” and not obsess about the return trip until that day arrived!
And speaking of arrivals, we landed in Rome right on time… Nine time zones ahead of the west coast of the US of A, and therefore touchdown was a little after noon on Thursday. Thursday! I was already more than a day into my vacation, and had not yet experienced a single gelato!
We met our Italian tour guide, Anselmo, who spoke not only Italian, but fluent English as well as Spanish, French and German, then settled in to wait for more people to arrive from all over the US before transferring to the hotel.
The hotel, a little off the beaten path, was quite elegant, and at our first meal in Italy, at a table laid with good china and a linen tablecloth, we met many of our fellow travelers, all just as weary, and all just as excited, about the next two weeks’ adventures.
I went to bed at 11 p.m., expecting not to sleep, as it was only 2 p.m. at home, but since I’d gotten up on Wednesday, and it was now Thursday night, sleep came quickly after all. Anselmo had set a wake-up call for all 34 of us, but I was up and raring to go long before the phone rang.
I was, at last, arising in Italy! Let the fun begin!