I love internet checkin. I scored myself a pretty good seat. Although it the last row of seats and its a window seat (I always get aisle seats), but this is a 2 seater. And being the last row of a 2 seater, meant there was no one behind me except the plane door. This meant I can recline myself for the entire duration of the flight and sleep, and not worry about people who get narky about people who recline their seats. (Trust me, theres heaps of assholes out there who kick and punch the back of your seat if you recline). Being a window seat almost meant I get extra storage between my seat and the window and no one could bump into me whilst lining up for the toilets.
I had a little 10yr old girl in the seat next to me, which wasn't too bad a thing until she decided to use me as a human pillow. This basically meant every few minutes her head will fall ontop of me somewhere and wake me up. This resulted in me almost leaning out of the seat to get a good nights sleep. Like all long distance flights, you get crap all sleep. Even with my super motion sickness tablets that knock you out, I couldn't sleep the entire 12 hours to Frankfurt. Luckily Singapore airlines has on demand movies to keep me entertained.
A view of Frankfurt from the planeWhen I got to Frankfurt, it was like 6am in the morning Frankfurt time and I was sick as a dog. The flight was hot and cold meaning I didn't know whether to keep warm or I was too hot. Great. Anyway, the first thing I did was try and find a transfer lounge to get my boarding pass. Unfortunately, they didn't have spare trolleys inside the terminal meaning I had to lug my hand carry with me everywhere. And by every where, I mean over 2/3 of Frankfurt airport. And Frankfurt airport is HUGE. There are 60 departure gates for section B alone. I lost count of how many where in section A and C. It took me over 1.5hrs to walk from C to B to find out that there is no transfer lounge for Alitalia. And that I would need to go through passport control and go to the main checkin counters. Luckily, the passport control in Frankfurt is soooooo easy. No forms or anything. Just show your passport, they may check your photos, or not. Then they stamp it and you're on your way. I finally got my boarding pass to Rome, but I had no gate. I decided to grab a roll and coffee to recover from the marathon hike I just did with my 10kg hand carry.
Variety of food on offer
This is when Moishii SMS me. "OMG! Jessica booked my flight to Rome on the 11th July. I have no flight!! Trying to solve it now for fucks sake". Those of you might remember Moishii's flight from Istanbul to Rome got cancelled because the airline went bust, and we managed to get him onto an Alitalia flight. Because Alitalia were taking over all of Air One's flights, they didn't issue a new ticket. All we had was a confirmation email that the flight had been taken over by Alitalia and that theres a booking reference number I told Moishii to call up and check.
When I got this SMS, I literally had my coffee in one hand, and my roll half way to my mouth. I took one look and went "Ha! Its not april fools you FOOL! You can't trick me! I don't believe all THREE of us could've missed the fact that it was booked for the wrong date". And just as I was about to sink my teeth into my roll, a thought occurred to me. Its us we're talking about....things like this are highly likely to occur. I almost threw my coffee and food onto the ground as I dove into my hand carry pulling things out of the bag like a mad woman. I finally got to the bottom of the bag where I had a folder with printouts of all emails and photocopies of all documents. I found the email and went "Oh fuck." The flight WAS booked for the 11th July! I can't believe all of us missed that!
It was then frantic SMS hoping that Moishii can arrange a flight to meet me in Rome. He was on the phone to Sydney screaming at Jessica my travel agent, who had a nervous breakdown trying to book my flight and thought she finally got rid of us when I flew out only to have this blow up in her face! After about an hour, I got the SMS that said Moishii has a flight to Rome! OH THANK GOD!!
Meanwhile, I still had no gate. I need a gate number! It could possibly take me 1.5hrs to walk to my gate and I might miss my flight! I did manage to find out that I should be boarding at one of the 60 gate Bs. So to play it safe, I went back into passport control and headed towards area B. It took a good 15mins to walk there, but since I didn't have a gate, I didn't know where to sit. I wandered around for another 10-15mins before I found an empty spot on the ground where I planted myself. I pulled out my laptop all ready to blog, when I foudn out that the battery was dead. CRAP! The power plug must've fallen out when I was in Singapore and didn't charge! I didn't have a book with me either! I had no seat, no laptop and no book to keep me occupied. Basically that meant I sat on the floor, in the middle of a walk way, and stared at people for the next 2 hours hoping I had a gate to bum at.
My boarding gate finally got announced, but my stupid B gate is away from all other gates and its on the other side of the airport. I grab my bags and make a run of it, only to have to go to passport control again, before I finally got to my gate. It was then I found out that our flight has been delayed. Bloody Italians. In total, I spent almost 5 hours in Frankfurt before I even got on a flight. I haven't even got to Italy yet and they're trying to screw me over! The Italians hate us!
2hours later, I finally touched down in Rome. I collected my luggage and tried to look for passport control. The next thing I know, I'm in the arrivals lounge. Errrrr....did I just illegally enter the country?? I did look around, but there was no passport control to be seen. So I did what any normal person would do. I made a get away. I tried to find a place to plant myself for the 3hour wait before Moishii's flight arrives. This is when I find out that his flight has been delayed. Great! I went to information to try and find out how to get to our accommodation only to find out nothing. We're not even on their map, which means we're on the outskirts of town. Near St Peters my ass. I grabbed myself a slice of pizza to tide me over til dinner time and pulled out a book that was in my checked in luggage. God this was bloody good pizza! It was even a fast food joint and its better than any Italian pizza I have had at home!
I decided to call up the woman who is supposed to meet us at the apartment and let her know we're going to be late. One big problem. She doesn't speak english. And my Italian is shocking. 2euros later, we haven't understood a thing and I've run out of change. CRAP. Theres an internet/phone card place right next to the payphones, so I decided to buy a phone card and ask the lady to call up my accommodation woman for me. Unfortunately, the cheapest card is 30 euros, with 6 euros tax. Thats 36 euros! Like $60AUD+! Not that I had a choice, so I forked over the money and she managed to call the woman up and tell her that Moishii's flight won't be arriving til atleast 5:30. She was supposed to meet us there at 5:30, now we probably won't get there til 7pm. Crap.I decided to see how much a shuttle bus will cost to get us to the apartment. The trains would've been 11euros each, but we're going to be late already, so maybe a shuttle bus will be slightly faster. The response I got was 45euros for the 2 of us. Ok, thats bad, but dealable. So I find a place to crash whilst waiting for Moishii's flight. An hour later, I decided to check the status of his flight, and his arrival tim of 3:50pm, is now 6:20pm. FARK! My 3 hour wait has suddenly turned into a 5 hour wait! I was feeling sick and tired and cranky. I grabbed a seat in the corner where I sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Its been over 24hrs since I've had a shower, and it was stinking hot. I felt gross. Near the end of my of my 5hr wait, I find out that Moishii's flight has been delayed AGAIN. By the time he finally walked out of the gates, I've been waiting for almost 5.5hrs!! I was about to hit someone then burst into tears! And it was already 7pm and we're still at the airport!We had a big group hug after the hell we've been through, only for me to find out that Moishii went through passport control. Shit. I'm in the country illegally. We decided to split up. I needed to get my passport stamped, and Moishii needs to find out about shuttle buses. I told him to go to the counter at the end, since the one closest to us don't do apartments whilst I ran back into the terminal and hand myself over to the police. This is when I'm told I don't need to go through passport control because I have a stamp from Frankfurt airport. Its not like its hard to get a stamp in Frankfurt.....anywhooo. I run back out into the arrival area onto to find Moishii getting yelled at, at the transfer counter I told him NOT to go to. *Sigh*We finally went to the correct counter, and the response I got was either pay 50euros and wait 20-30mins for them to round up enough people to drive us to the accommodation, or pay 75euros for a taxi to take us there directly. The 45euro place I talked to earlier was a shuttle bus as well, meaning we were going to have to wait. By this time, its been almost 48 hours since I've slept in a bed. And Moishii was up all night trying to organise his flight to Rome. We decided to pay the 75euros and just get the hell out of there.We finally pull up the apartment 30mins later only to bump into this family with 2 kids. We followed them into the apartment only for me to stop and question Moishii as to whether they're the landlords, or we're stalking a family into their own homes. After alot of arguing, one of them waved us into the house. PHEW. Its the right people. The guy tells me to come into the house, and since only half of the door was open, and I was trying to juggle my suitcase and hand luggage when trying to get through the door, my suitcase fell over. It hit the door, and the door went slamming into the wall. Shit, theres a dent. In less than a minute I've already caused a scene.We got a tour of the place where everything was spoken in Italian, but we managed to get the gist of things. Then it was time to sort out payment. We had originally booked for 4 nights, but because of our tour cancellation, we had to change it to 3 nights. This happened in May. Unfortunately, they said that it doesn't matter that we changed the booking in May, we still have to pay the 4 nights. We're getting royally screwed but theres nothing we can do about it. Either pay, or sleep on the streets. They also wanted us to pay a 300euro security deposit, but since we told them we're leaving very early on the day we check out, and they can't get here because they needed to take the kids to school, they said we didn't need to pay the security deposit. I thought they were going to double it considering the way we crashed through the door. In less than an hour in Rome, we've spent 350euros. Thats $700AUD!!!They finally left and we explored the apartment. The apartment is huge! I keep getting lost around here. It was only after they left that we found out they locked one of the bedrooms. The apartment sleeps 8, but they only unlocked 2 bedrooms for us because there were only 2 of us. Stingy bastards.I decided to have a shower before looking for food. It was then that I found out that the shower is broken. The shower head is loose, so when you turn on the water, instead of spraying water forwards, it sprays it backwards. To make things worse, theres no shower curtains, meaning I flood the bathroom everytime I try and have a shower. I ended up having to sit in the bathtub to minimis splashage. Oh, the toilet also barely flushes. It takes you about 5 minutes of pumping and pushing the tank to get it to flush. So the $600 we paid for the apartment got us a broken toilet and shower. Great. Oh, the TV also has no reception.I managed to shower withou completely flooding the place. As I walk out of the bathroom to get ready to go out, I drop my perfume bottle, smashing glass all over the corridoor. I'm having a great start to the holiday!!! 10mins later, I managed to clean up my mess when we grab out stuff and head out onto the streets to look for food. Less than a minute after leaving the apartment, I almost stepped in dog poop. ARGH!!!We walk around and realised that we're in a shithole of a neighbourhood. Great. We paid so much money to stay in a slum area. We grabbed some water from the nearest bar, since the supermarket is closed to tide us through the night. We stopped by a payphone and used the 36euro phone card to call Christine to give her some abusing who answered at 4am in the morning. Who the hell answers at 4am in the morning?? Especially after she gave me a big speech about calling her work phone, since it'll be in the livingroom and will definately go into Voicemail. Thanks Christine. You ruined our moment to call and abuse!!After that fiasco, we found a local restaurant that was still open. Its dinner time! Like typical italian restaurants, there was a big basket of grissinis on the table which were soooo yummy! I decided to smuggle a few home with us after seeing the price on the menu.We ordered a vegetable soup each since we were both sick, and I must say, this is the most delicious soup I've ever had. Yes, admittedly I was hungry, sick and tired, but DAMN THIS WAS GOOD SOUP!
As we sat there enjoying our soup, we saw the waiter wheel out a trolly of food for another table. What the hell? I turned to Moishii and screamed "HOW COME WE DIDN'T GET A TROLLEY????" which turned into a laughing fit because he was thinking the exact same thing. WE'RE NO TROLLEY WORTHY! Every other table was getting served with a trolley except us. Hell, they're even cleaning up tables with a trolley! WE'RE NOT TROLLEY WORTHY! We're both ranting and raving about the trolley and how we should keep ordering food until it comes out on a trolley when our next course comes out....on a trolley. Oh thank god! Because I really can't afford to keep ordering food!
The mains were delicious even though expensive. The entire meal costs us about $90AUD. Our bill is really racking up, and we've been in Italy for less than a day....
We head back to the apartment where we crash into bed for the night.
A view of Frankfurt from the plane
Variety of food on offer
