Home At Last

I made it back from Italy safe and sound last night. Our group arrived at the Rome airport at approximately 3:30 AM Easter morning to catch a 6:15 AM flight. I had a slight glitch with my ticket and was beginning to think I may be staying another night in Rome but Lucia, our wonderful, local guide, took care of all the details and straightened out the situation.

After getting ticketed, we checked our luggage and moved to the security line. As we were waiting our turn, the power went out -- no lights. We weren't sure what was happening and it was a little scary. Our group leader used her cell phone to call Lucia to see if she knew anything. She said she was in the train station and power was out there as well. After standing for about 20 minutes in the dark, we sat down on the floor to rest and nap. Security did not even know what was happening because their emergency communication system was not working. Well, you can imagine what we were thinking and trying not to say.

Finally, after another 25 minutes or so, the lights came back on and we were processed. Never found out what caused the outage, but we were more concerned with catching our flight and getting out of there. Our flight to Amsterdam took off an hour late -- so by the time we landed in Amsterdam, we had about 20 minutes to get to our gate and that included going through security and passport check again. We were down to ten minutes and the gate was literally a mile away from our arrival gate. Some of us ran the entire way to gate. As we got to the gate, they said they had been holding the plane for us. Another 15 or 20 minutes and we would have missed this flight.

I am a bit jet-lagged today and moving slow. We had a full itinerary so there was no time to stop and post or check emails. I hope to have my computer back in the next day or so and begin blogging. As time permits, I will post some of the highlights of my trip.