The past couple of days feel like they have been one big, long, bad day. I think I stayed up until midnight or 1 to try to pack after I got back from BWI, but ended up falling asleep. Luckily I did set my alarm for 5 this time... but when I woke up at 5, my suitcase was still completely empty. So then I spent the morning figuring out what to take, which worked out surprisingly well; my weight came in at 45 lbs. I can’t think of the last time I was under the weight restriction. But I was rushing to the airport because my mom thought I should be there super early when I just ended up sitting there for 2 hours until my flight took off.
Finally on the flight we pull out of the gate, are on the runway and.. we stop. We’re grounded due to severe thunderstorms in the Detroit area. They say we have to wait 40 mins for an update. 40 mins comes and goes, and maybe after an hour they finally tell us they still haven’t received any information. So we sit and wait, the air conditioning only barely working since the engines are no longer on. Finally the captain makes the executive decision after nearly 2 hours to go back to the gate because the heat on the plane is unbearable, even though he loses his place in the take off line in doing so. Back in the airport, no one can even say when or if this plane will take off, and at this point there is no way I will make my connection, which I previously had 3 hours to make. So I run to some service desk with phones and sit on the reservations line forever, on hold and then talking to at least 3 different people who did not help me. One suggests getting rerouted through New York as the only way to get to Rome tonight, but mentions that the flight leaves in 10 mins and must be booked by the airport ground staff.
So I run to a service desk at a gate that is not for my flight because the line is short and because there wasn’t anyone at my gate. I pretty much beg a customer service rep to help me given the time crunch and the fact that I need to be in Italy ASAP. He spends the next 45 or so minutes trying to get me rebooked onto the flight through JFK that, while I was standing there, was delayed as well. Even with this delay I should still be able to make the connection in New York, he says, as long as I run.
After a lot of tries it turns out he can’t check me in for the second leg (NY-Rome) flight and he says I’ll have to do it when I arrive. “So I have to now run through JFK AND check in?” I ask. He says, “Oh well you don’t really have to run, just if you want to be safe.” He thinks the gates might be close by despite the fact that JFK is a huge airport so that it won’t be a problem.
I’m concerned about my bag. As he is rebooking me, the Detroit flight, which finally got slated for a 6:30 departure, continued to sit on the ground at least until 7. He says not a problem, the gates are right nearby and someone will take the bag off the Detroit flight right away and put it on the New York one. And he assures me that an hour connection is enough time in New York to transfer that bag as well, even though I know from working at Air France that that is the minimum time that we advice for connections and sometimes the bags do not make it.
But I’m on this flight. So I walk around the airport for a little. Stand around the gate and get on a minuscule airplane for a 40 min flight to New York. Once we arrive I bolt out of the airplane; I’ve got about 50 minutes to figure all this out, and it turns out to be not so easy.
There must have been bad weather all over the place because the airport was packed. I find the departure screen and beside all the flights there are simple numerical gate numbers, except for mine, which says TM1. What does TM1 mean? I try to ask an airport employee standing next to me and she says she doesn’t know. So I run around the whole building eventually interrupting some very busy Delta service rep who tells me it means Terminal 1, another building. Now I’m used to be in big airports and in general can navigate stuff like this, but why is JFK making it so difficult without a map to be found and random acronyms that are never explained?!
So I run out the doors towards ground transportation as the rep had advised me, despite not seeing any Terminal 1 signs. I’m in the parking lot at this point and finally spot a 1 in the distance. Is this really the easiest way to reach this terminal?! I run into the terminal up a bunch of stairs and see a closed Alitalia desk in front of me with one employee cleaning up. He looks at me (probably crazed/out of breath from running) and asks me if I am on this flight to Rome. I say yes and they check me in and tell me to go to the gate. So I have to go again through security and then run though Terminal 1 to my already boarding flight.
And here I am. Somehow on this flight to Rome from New York, instead of Detroit, on Alitalia instead of Delta. I’ve heard many an Alitalia horror story, but it has proven to be OK thus far. Maybe minus the fact that I got stuck with a middle seat wedged between a bickering Greek couple. Couldn’t they have just sat together? Besides that, the plane is full of (presumably) crazy Italians.
There were probably at least 40 movies on my little personal TV and I hadn’t even cracked my book/magazines yet, assuming that Washington would be my short layover and Detroit my long one, but I promptly fell asleep and even ended up missing the take off, my favorite part. I only figure this out when I wake up and can’t believe that we are still taxiing, and look up at the map to see that we are over the Atlantic. So I ended up dozing off or resting for most of the flight until now, 1 hour until my arrival in Rome. My eyes and throat hurt (my contacts are dry), and I have serious doubts about the whereabouts of my bag, as well as not know what to do at all once I arrive to Rome. If the bag isn’t here I think I would prefer to stay in Rome until it does arrive.. and with my delayed arrival and only 1 train an hour to Viterbo, my simplistic relaxing little trip to one of my favorite Italian spots has proven only to make my trip even more complicated. So I’m landing with no place to go and nothing to do, I guess I will figure it all out then. Maybe I’ll just head to Florence and find somewhere to stay there.
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