Getting to Italy

Anne and I were up early on Saturday morning and got to the airport and were checked in in plenty of time to make our Auckland flight at 11:00am. This is the recommended flight for catching the 2:00pm Singapore Airlines flight. We had only just got to the Koru lounge when we learnt that the connecting flight from Dunedin was delayed due to fog and our flight would now leave at 11:30 - That sounds close, given that check-in starts at 1:00pm.

Anyway, after a few more delays, our flight left at 11:45 and got us to Auckland and hour later, just in time for a quick bus trip over to the international terminal to make the flight - excellent.

The first flight being during the day seemed a very long and drawn out affair, so we watched movies, read books, slept a bit and did all the things you do to pass 10 hours on a plane - no not that one!

We had 4 hours in Singapore, time to wander round the shops, Anne to buy a new hand bag for travel - a bit bigger than the Khatmandu one, have a bite to eat, sit down, stand up, walk around, check out all the shops - all the things you do to pass 4 hours in an airport.

The flight to Rome went much faster, we slept the first half of the flight because in NZ time it left at about 6am, so we were basically exhausted.

We got to Rome at 7am and waited for our bags to arrive.....and waited.....and waited.....and waited......and noticed another couple also waiting. While I did some more waiting (after 45 minutes) Anne went off to find the lost luggage counter. This was a good thing because it meant we got to the front of the lost luggage queue. After an hour and 3 other flights being unloaded off our carosel, we concluded the luggage was lost and set about and the man behind the lost luggage desk was processing our claim. By this stage, there were a dozen people from various flights waiting in the lost luggage queue and our claim took 45 minutes to process - as I said it was good to be at the front of the queue.

Having done all that we could do about our missing luggage (hint - the first paragraph is a clue to the problem) we went off to get the car. That bit was easy - we called a man as agreed, he came and picked us up in about half an hour, took us to the collection point, gave us the car and we were on our way.

We are staying in Cortona, which is about 2 and a half hours North of Rome and the airport is on the South side of Rome, so the first thing to do was get around Rome on the ring road - in the pouring rain.

The Italian drivers are nutty. I tried to introduce them to indicators, but I think I just confused them. Anyway, once we were off the ring road, things got much more sensible and we made good time up to the villa in Cartona. It is a beatiful villa, but thanks to the power of the internet, you can check it out for yourself. http://www.casacoccola.com/

We arrived at the villa at about 1pm. Hillary, Debs, Tim and Jo had checked in the day before, so it was all fully provisioned. We spent the afternoon eating, drinking and being merry, in order to try and survive to the evening and get a good nights sleep and into the Italian time zone.

We crashed at 7pm - a mixture of tiredness and alcohol - but a nice mix.