Sunday, August 31, 2025

Fly to Roma, Italy

After breakfast we said good-bye to Camilla and Peter, promising to stay in touch and maybe seeing them in November. It was another sunny day but the skies were much hazier than yesterday. Seeing the antenna would have been even tougher had the swim been today.

We stopped for a short break about half way to Istanbul then continued on. We arrived at the airport about 1:30 p.m. After some quick good-byes to Tim and Simon, and Peder, we went into the huge Istanbul airport terminal. When we got to the check in counter we upgraded to business class but were shocked when we were told that we had pay nearly $140 to check Blythe’s bag. Mine did not cost any because of my 10K status with United Airlines, a partner of Turkish Airlines. I made to sound incredulous but knew there was no use arguing with the guy. It would not do any good and likely just get me in trouble.

We had a nice flight to Rome without any further hassles. We had a long walk to immigration and baggage claim then tried to whistle up an Uber car. I used the Uber app and got a car for $95 to take us to the hotel in Rome. We followed the directions to the Uber pickup but when I saw on the app where the car was going to pick us up, we were not even close. And, we only had seven minute to get to the pickup spot. We did not run retracing our steps back to the terminal, but I had hustled with Blythe trailing behind me to barely get there in time. The driver called me and told me we had to go upstairs to another spot and we finally found him. But…he was not an Uber driver but a regular taxi driver. I later learned that for some reason Uber is not allowed at the airport despite all the signs indicating where to go to meet the Uber driver. Anyway, we got to our hotel after dark not far from the Vatican where we are going tomorrow.

We were greeted from the top of some steps by a young woman receptionist, Alexis. Her colleague, Cheema, fetched us a glass of water and hauled our bags to the lobby. Alexis told us she could arrange for a taxi to take us to the Vatican tomorrow and also to arrange to get train tickets for us in a few days when we head up to Milan. Cheema took us up to our room and showed us around including our private outdoor terrance, the complimentary cookies, and how to open and shut the terrace door blinds. I like this kind of service.

Tomorrow is a big day of touring the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. We have a scheduled tour time at 10:00 a.m. The forecast is for warm sunny weather.