Welcome to the United States of America

July 4, 2008

So I’ve finally arrived back home. It’s been a long time away from the states and it’s an interesting comparison between what I’ve seen in Europe and coming back to the US. Previous to this trip, the only other times when I stepped out of the country were for trips to China/Hong Kong and Indonesia/Singapore. Somehow, I think this trip has been even better than the China/Hong Kong trip because I saw different countries in Europe, got to go on a most excellent cruise, and seemed to be a little bit more civilized. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but I had a great time on this cruise. Perhaps I’m not even making any sense?

Well we caught an early morning flight out of Rome and boy was it packed. The drive t o the airport was quite uneventful and for some strange reason, I managed to exchange about 50+ euros for $60+ in US dollars. Explain that to me…I swear I made off like a bandit with the exchange.

But before I talk about the flight, let me talk about our return to Rome.

We got to Rome to explore the city one more time after Venice. We left Venice in the morning and once we arrived in Rome, we saw our tour bus that picked up our luggage and took us into the city to pick up our tour guide. The ride in was pretty uneventful and we had a large tour bus for the 12 people in our group. When we met up with Francesca, our tour guide, we got off the bus since she informed us that it would be a walking tour. Somehow when we booked the second leg of our trip to Rome, we didn’t set an itinerary and the tour would wind up being the same places we went to on our inaugural trip to the city during our cruise. So instead of a walking tour, we frustrated Francesca and wound up going back on the bus and going around the city.

Of course you would “think” that we’d go to different places now that we’re on the bus, but it seemed to me that we paid to tour the city again only this time by bus. The tour arranged by the travel agency we went through totally sucked and our tour guide seemed to just wanna get rid of us. I don’t think we even used up the four hours we had with her. We wound up back at the place where the bus driver had originally dropped us off and started with a “walking” tour up the streets of Rome to the “People’s Plaza” and back down to Trevi Fountain where our hotel was located. It was hot and we stopped by McDonalds for lunch - it was not my fault. I did not ask to stop at McDonalds. We had cousins in our group that wanted it. Seriously!

After lunch we walked over to the Spanish Steps before continuing our journey of senseless walking through the streets of Rome. After making our way through the People’s Plaza, headed to Trevi Fountain before reaching our hotel…Hotel Trevi (supposedly a 3-star hotel).

Now Hotel Trevi is NOT a 3-star hotel. In fact, it SUCKS. Their rooms aren’t even in the same building. The elevator is so rickety that when you’re riding it, the floor seems like it’ll give way. Our hotel room was hot and small. The A/C unit didn’t even work and we had to find a new room the last night a block away! The hotel’s rooms are located on street level where the public passes by and it doesn’t seem that secure. Our second hotel room was 5 floors up and imagine lugging several bags of luggage up the stairs that aren’t consistent in height…not pleasant nor easy. Absolutely horrible and I’m thankful not to be there anymore. The hotels in Europe are highly mislabeled as 3 or 4 star hotels…but the locations are good. What an interesting give-and-take.

So we arrive at the airport and finally board. Customs in Italy is pretty complex. We wound up getting on the plane and endure a 9 hour flight back to the states. Continental’s flight back home had those in-flight monitors stationed at every seat so you could watch a variety of movies, tv shows, music, etc. right from your seat. I think it’s quite ingenious and I’d like to have that - you can watch whatever you want instead of relying on a set schedule based on flight. I caught up on some movies I hadn’t seen like The Bucket List (good movie), Curious George, Bourne Supremecy, Chris Rock, the Godfather, and more.

Well we arrive in Newark and customs was insane. There are a lot of people entering the states and our luggage was slow to get through. Managed not to have my bags inspected, but it wasn’t as if I brought back any illegal items or anything. Some passengers wound up not making their connecting flight - for some reason, the airlines thought that giving the passengers 15 minutes extra to get from the customs baggage claim to their gates would be sufficient. Problem is: the baggage carousel hadn’t fully offloaded the luggage. Good call, airline.

Luckily we didn’t have that short of a layover and within the next hour or so, we arrived at our gate and before we knew it, we’re back on the plane and arrived back in BWI. Now my vacation is over and it’s (unfortunately) back to work on Monday.

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Posted in Sightseeing, Travel