The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Me

Day 0, Get me to the Airport on Time!

 

After all our dreaming and planning, it was finally time to head to Italy.  I was going to be finished with my client and fly home on Wednesday.  I would then have all day Thursday to do any last minute packing, review my binder, take the cat to the Cat Spaw….

 

But then all heck broke loose at the client.  It was quite the mess.  I volunteered to stay an extra day, got someone to cover me while in Italy and booked flights for the week I got back. 

 I managed to stay relatively calm.  I had been working on an Italy to do list, and revamped it so that the Blog Fodder (BF) could do some of the work, and reminded myself that if we had our Passports, credit cards and each other, we would be fine.

Thank goodness I packed our clothes the weekend before!

 

The downside was that BF had to take the cat to the Cat Spaw by himself.  That meant I last saw my kitty on May 3^rd and wouldn’t see her again until May 29^th!  Poor Kitty!  Poor Mama!

Here is Miss Callie, so named because she is a Calico.  Good thing we never had children, they’d probably be named “Hey You!” and “The Other One!”

 

But I got everything settled, I made my Seattle flight and landed at 7PM.  After racing home, unpacking my LA bag, repacking my LA bag for when I get back and gathering all the last minute items for Italy, we were ready.  We had a quick dinner and then off to bed.

Our alarm went off at 4 AM and we stumbled around getting ready.  The town car to the airport picked us up promptly at 4:45.  The town car was a bit of a splurge.  The same company also has shared vans for less, but it seemed worth it to especially for the ride home when we got back.

We got to the airport, breezed through security, since we both have TSA PreCheck and took the tram to the South Gates.  After a rather indifferent, expensive breakfast, we waited at the gate for boarding time.

I do fly a lot, and I will say the worse part of the whole experience is actually getting on the plane.  Everyone feels like they have to crowd the gate, instead of waiting for their group to be called.  We had Sky Priority, since I paid for the Economy Comfort seats, which means we were the second group to board.

After the crush and shuffle, we were on the plane and in our seats with our bags safely stowed in the overhead bin.  The nice man who had the aisle seat was great to chat with for the 5 ½ hour flight to New York.

Our flight took off on time and landed on time at JFK.  We had a boring 3 hour layover at the airport.  We found a restaurant for lunch and then settled in at the gate to wait again.

If I thought boarding the plane in Seattle was bad…..

Apparently the flight to Milan was oversold.  The gate agents started the offer to volunteer to give up seats at $600 in vouchers.  The offer kept going up and up until they got to $1,300 in cash cards and a flight on Emirates.  We passed, but it was interesting to watch.  They also said they would not board the plane until they had enough volunteers.

 So, all the anxious people started mobbing around the boarding area early and were really impatient by the time it was really time to board.  The gate agent kept yelling at us to get in a single file line and the mob kept yelling back to just board the plane.  She eventually let business class on, and then called for Sky Priority.  While arguing with the guy in front of us that he couldn’t get on yet, we were able to slip around and beat some of the crowd in.

So about 12 hours after we left our house, we were in our seats and on our way to Freakin’ Italy!

We were on an Airbus 330, so we had 2 seats all to ourselves.  They came through with the cart about 6 times on the 8 hour flight.  We got a hot towel, bottles of water, drinks, snacks, dinner, more drinks, more hot towels, breakfast…..

 

The entertainment system is also nicer than on domestic flights.  BF watched 2 or 3 movies, I snoozed as much as possible.

And there we were, 8 hours later, landing in Italy!

 

Loooong day, but so worth it!