Jet travel is always an amazing experience for me, and I think that’s the right way to feel. We live in a special time, that we can climb inside a machine that will transport us halfway around the world in a matter of hours.
Ahh, but just because things are amazing doesn’t mean they work smoothly. People are so much more unreliable than physics. At the Seattle airport I showed up about 2 hours early for my flight thinking, “I’ll check in and then have a nice dinner, etc.” I got to the gate and the airline people were setting up their computers whatever that means. The one guy asked if I was waiting for a seat assignment and said he’d be doing that in about 10 minutes. So I waited, a while, and another while, should have gone to get food, but I thought maybe I’d get to choose my seat first (I like the window) if I was early. Well it never happened. After an hour and a half of sitting and reading, people started BOARDING, so I went up. “Oh no no, we’ll call your name.” So I sat, and about a minute later I heard “Rblflbragh Mellinger,” so I went up, waited in line, “Oh no that wasn’t YOUR name.” Right. People are boarding. Everyone is in line. So I go to the counter again. “Oh here’s your boarding pass.” Thanks.
The flight was pretty good. A lady asked me to trade seats so she could sit by her friend. I thought her friend was in the middle of the plane (I DID get a window seat) so I was VERY reluctant, but after some more gesturing I discovered that he had a window seat on the other side of the plane. So that worked out well. I still got my window seat AND didn’t have to sit next to someone who was angry at me for not accommodating them.
Then I fell asleep and had an AWESOME dream about the plane almost crashing. I think that I’ve figured out that real-world white noise is a strong intensifier for my dreams. The pilot was trying to put the plane down in the ocean, but the waves were WAY to big. Think 20-25ft. swells. So as he’s coming down this big wave comes at us and instead of crashing over the plane, it kicks the plane almost straight up, so the pilot gives the engines all the power they have, but the plane slows and rolls upside down. This is all very vivid. We’re going very slowly at this point but somehow the pilot rights the plane and gets us back on course. There was some other stuff about my helping move around emergency mattresses once the plane had landed and other things that don’t make a whole lot of sense, but the action sequence was pretty phenomenal. The real plane landed fine in Amsterdam, and the hop to Rome was uneventful.
So here’s the fixin’s bar for the bread that I took a picture of and then forgot. Mmm.
Yummy Amsterdam Airport Omlette. Note unadorned bread. Grr.
Once in Rome, I was surprised at the lack of immigration control. I guess that checkpoint in the Amsterdam airport when I showed my passport to the serious looking man covered it, because after I claimed my bags in Rome, I walked through the “Nothing to declare” door and I was basically on the curb.
Non-crashing, to-Rome-flying, plane.
The bus to the hotel was a bit confusing. The guy drove around the long term parking lot twice. I saw people that had just gotten off the bus still at the stop on the second pass. One guy got on at that stop with his girlfriend, then got off the bus , leaving his gf, and got back on at a different stop as we were leaving the parking lot.
Finally got to the hotel. The clock says 11pm. I’ll try to sleep until 6am then have breakfast and catch the bus to the ship.
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