When in Rome..

Arrival, Tuesday afternoon, 21 December 2010.

Hello Rome, I am back for the Mulligan from 2005. This time, no food poisoning, or whatever it was you did to me five years ago!

There's a bit of time dilation going on with the blog; I meant to fill in the story as I flew over, but travel inconveniences got in the way so I miraculously went from "six days before" to "here I am." Actually, the trip from Seattle to Rome was fairly uneventful, simply the typical pains that go along with a three leg trip. (Damn, I miss living in the Bay Area where most of the world was a non-stop away!) The Air Canada flight on an Embraer (Brazilian) jet was the only real "highlight," with the passenger entertainment system indicating we had traveled over 24,000 miles in four hours. That, if true, would have made us better than twice as fast as the publicly claimed speed of the SR-71, but the flight attendant admitted it was a known software bug, and they were waiting for the patch. Thankfully the cockpit software seems to have been better tested and more accurate.

The only other point worth mentioning during the trip was my leg in Copenhagen, where snow had been extremely pervasive these last few days. When I arrived, three and a half hours before the connecting flight into Rome, I went to the transfer desk to get my boarding pass for the last leg, only to find out I was customer 171 while they were on number 76…understandable, except that they only had two (2) agents working the backlog; somehow, I (and others) thought SAS would have thrown more meat into the problem given all the publicity about the weather those prior days. In any case, I ignored that queue, went to the indicated gate for my flight into Rome, and was boarded in time for the flight without any drama. So, all in all, a rather monotonous, and lengthy, flight from SEA to YYZ (Toronto) to CPH (Copenhagen) to FCO (Rome).

Having said all that, I have just arrived in Rome, and I am in one of the local "bars" with free WiFi. I'm tired, and it is approaching 9:00 PM local time (which would mean I have been up for well over 24 hours in SEA time). I took a quick pass by the Vatican to pick up my ticket for tomorrow's audience with the Pope, and I also made a quick run through the Trastevere district to see what it had to offer. More thoughts on both of those tomorrow, when I have a chance to regrow a few of the missing braincells.