Day 15 - Travel

Good morning Rome. We are so excited to be heading home and almost there. Today is the long day though as the first of our two flights is 9 hours long. We headed to breakfast, where we learned the night before the breakfast buffet is not included with our room and would cost 16 euros a person. The receptionist also told us we could just pick out a few things and pay for those. We got seated at breakfast and no one explained to us the rules so we just got our breakfast and ate. We waited a couple of minutes to see if anyone would come give us a bill or anything but no one did so we left. We even walked by the folks at the cash register but they didn't say anything either. I guess we could now be wanted in Rome for stealing breakfast, if anyone goes there and sees our wanted poster let us know.

We took the free shuttle to the airport. Since we are flying to the US the check in procedure is a little different. We had our own area of the check in counters where before you can get to the counter your passport gets checked and then you go find the appropriate airline counter. Once at United our passport get checked again while we waited in line. Further into the line we also get our boarding passes. When we receive our tickets we notice that we are not sitting together, we ask the woman if she can correct it and she said no we have to ask when we get to the counter. If there wasn't a problem the only purpose of the counter is to check your bags. We ask the woman if she can change our seats and she says she can for $99 USD, as we would need to upgrade to economy plus. That was not acceptable to Danielle as there was no reason we shouldn't be able to sit together let alone have to pay extra. The supervisor got involved and the outcome was that we would be placed on the stand by list with a note saying we were together. We were told that they would work on the seating with the stand by list. We went through security etc., stopped at a few shops and by the time we got to the gate Danielle went to ask them about moving our seats. We were greatful that we got our seats together. On the flight we learned that other families were not sitting together on the flight, our of the 3 others in the row 2 were not with their families.

We received the usual custom form on the plane and were told only one per a family needs to be filled out. This caused a little questioning for us. We are family even though federally it is not recognized. We asked one of the flight attendants what to do, we told her we live in the same house, and we have the same last name. She said just fill out one form, so we did.

Customs in DC is not always the funnest thing as the lines are normally long. However, this trip was a rare occasion, our flight was the only one in the customs hall. We got our luggage fairly quickly and made it through customs and security without a problem. Customs didn't question us about our one form.

While at the airport we met Phoenix a min pin and his owner Anthony. Anthony is a dancer and is moving to NYC from Kansas City. We have met some very kind and interesting people our trip. We are very glad to be home.

We would we do it again....

Rome - Yes, if we had new people to share it with. We did everything we wanted to do in Rome and the sites have been there a very long time and not going to change anytime soon. Highly recommend the view from the cupola atop of St. Peter's Basilica.

Malta - Possibly. We had fun there despite the hotel experience. However, if you are looking for the an island vacation with lots of beaches etc, then Malta is not the best choice. The country is building up and trying to be more appealing to the tourist so possibly in 5 - 10 years it will be a hot spot.

Santorini, Greece - Oh yea we would go back. Even though we have done pretty much everything you could on the island we had so much fun. We would actual like to tour the Greek Islands spending a few days on each.

Day 14 - Travel

This morning we spent just hanging around the hostel as we had to leave at noon for the airport. We finally were able to sleep in as we got smart and closed the shutters so the sun would not wake us up. We went swimming in the infinity pool that the hostel had and just hung out and read waiting for time to go by. After swimming we headed back into our room and got ready to travel to Rome. We packed up and headed downstairs to see Poppy and her husband. Poppy's husband acts as the driver for the hostel and we had to wait for him to get back from a pick up at the airport. So again we waited. Finally he was back and ready to head back to the airport for our journey. We arrived at the tiny airport and were so surprised by how full it was and how small it was. We walk in the door and they scan our luggage even before we can get 5 feet in the door. Then we took our luggage to the check in counter. We couldn't check in because all of the agents that worked for our airline, were at the gate sending off the 12:35 flight to Athens. Once we could check in it was amazing at how many people were squished in this little airport. There are 7 "gates". Each gate was a door to the outside, no jet ways. We headed upstairs to the open air "cafe". This would be a terrace next to a typical airport snack stand. It was fine though because it was away from all of the people in the airport. We watched as two large planes boarded and took off, and figured it was safe to head downstairs. We headed downstairs and even though many of the people had gone, we still didn't have a place to sit. We waited and waited until it was finally our turn. We finally boarded the bus and headed to the plane. We climbed on board and were off to Athens. The trip to Athens is only 30 minutes so you get a drink take a sip and they are about to take it away again. Anyway, the flight was uneventful. We got to Athens and got our luggage (we had flights on different airlines because many of the small airlines in Europe only have a few routes that they fly). We headed to the next airline to see if we could check in because we had 5 hours between planes and did not want to lug our luggage around for that long. Well it turns out we had to because we were not allowed to check in for an hour and a half. We headed to the shopping area and Danielle bought a book to keep her busy and we got a snack....and waited, while we watched 6 boys from the country of Georgia (they had shirts on that told us this) use the luggage trolley's as race cars with a set course and a switch point where people went from the pusher to the rider. Anyway, we also saw them get caught and stop. We went and sat a the check in area until they let us check in. Then we found our gate and decided to get some real food, knowing it would be too late when we got to Rome to try and find food. After dinner we headed to the gate and waited some more. We hopped on the plan and were off to Rome. We got our luggage and headed to the bus (which we had to call and ask him to wait for us since our luggage was a little slow getting to us). We got to the hotel and crashed. We were excited about the hotel as it had a few things we were missing like a big bed, wash clothes and a tub! It wasn't long before we were snoozing.

Tomorrow, we head home! YAY!