Happily ever after

"...That is my home of love: if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again..."

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 109

One last look at our apartment.  The middle floor balcony is off our living room; the upper balcony is off the master bedroom.  Yes, that's our last load of laundry flapping in the breeze.

Living room.  We were lucky that our eat-in kitchen was a separate room - that is not always the case in Italy.  Our apartment was quite large by Italian standards.

The foyer.  Doctor's office to the left; our door to the right.  This was a big hangout spot for the townsfolk

Outside FCO Airport, with both passports.  I will use the US one when entering or leaving the US, but will use the Italian one at passport control when leaving (or entering) Italy.

Airport sculpture (as the airport is named after Da Vinci, there are many references to him throughout)

Paolo was a little short for this...

Well, we made it back to the USA, safe and sound.  We spent our last three nights in Fiumicino outside of Rome, since we had to drop off the rental car at the airport, as well as to obtain pre-flight Covid tests, which are still required for flights into the US.  They have a testing center in Terminal 3 of the airport, and as the current rules state that you can get the test done the day before, we opted to do that, so we wouldn't be scrambling at the last minute to make our flight.  We suspected that the wait for the test might be long.  We were able to preregister for the test online (by "preregister," I just mean fill in the required forms, not schedule a specific time).

Waiting in line - about an hour to go from this point

It seems that a lot of people do not plan for this testing ahead of time!  We were shocked by how many people waited until the last minute for their tests - there were several people who claimed they were going to miss their flight if they couldn't jump the queue.  What's that expression about your poor planning not being my emergency?  The gentleman in line ahead of us said he'd already missed his flight while he was waiting - although he seemed to take this pretty calmly; I assume he was able to rebook himself fairly easily.  There was a guy behind us, however, who asked everyone around him multiple times to let him go ahead, as he claimed his flight was departing in 20 minutes.  Super annoying.  It's not that we were being unkind by not wanting to let him go ahead, but rather, we didn't want to start a riot behind us, as there were plenty of other people also waiting who had flights to catch, too.

We stayed at the Hilton right next to the airport again - there is an extremely convenient elevated walkway from the hotel property over to the airport - and took the train into Rome proper twice.  The Monday before we left Italy was Liberation Day - Festa della Liberazione, a public holiday celebrating the Italian Resistance's overthrow of the Fascists and the Nazi powers in Italy in 1945 (in the North, anyway).   We took one last touristy open-top bus tour of Rome, to see the highlights of the city (many of which we've already visited between our 2018 trip and this one).  I took several videos from the bus (I discovered this is easier than trying to snap photos).  Here and here are links to two of my favorites.  This first was taken near the Colosseum and the Forum; the second was taken near the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II - also known as the "Wedding Cake." Afterward, we took ourselves out for a nice lunch nearby.

The following day, after our Covid tests described above, we went back into Rome, as I wanted to pick up an extra suitcase, as well as a few small, last minute gifts. As we were shopping, Paolo got his pocket picked in the store - right in front of the shopkeeper, who immediately recognized what was happening - it seemed he'd dealt with this particular pickpocket before - and we all chased him down into the next shop and got the phone back, thankfully. Later, we encountered this same asshole again on the street, and he actually has the balls to joke around about it and try to pass it all off as a bit of fun. I let him know it wasn't very funny to us - and he stomped off pretty quickly once I took my phone out and started taking his picture.

Jerky McJerkface, failed pickpocket

Our flight home the next morning was more or less uneventful, except that our flight departed a little earlier than scheduled, and thus landed in Philly earlier, too.  I think that's the first time that's happened for us, so far as I can recall.  I took a short video of our takeoff, to capture a bit of Italy and its western coastline from the air; click here to see it.

Pre-flight champagne.  Not that we were feeling particularly celebratory to be leaving Italy.

The toasted BBQ sandwich served as the "light meal" toward the end of the flight was probably one of the best things I've ever eaten on an airplane.

I believe this is Elba, famous for being Napoleon's first place of exile

We were seated in business class (one of the truly "splurge" bits of this adventure, to be sure), and while I can't speak to the main cabin, I can confirm that in our section, we were two of only three passengers wearing masks.  Some of the crew wore them, and some did not. I understand that the Covid precautions have become more relaxed here in the US.  That will take some getting used to.  Italy is also just now beginning to ease many of its Covid measures, but not as quickly as seems to be happening on this side of the Atlantic.

And here we are, unpacked and (mostly) settled in.  It took me a couple of days to get over the jet lag; Paolo seems to have had an easier time adapting.  It also took me several days to wade through the six months' worth of mail that had accumulated.  For now, I am just working through what I consider to be an adjustment period - trying to assimilate myself back into our American lives (we already miss the fresh bread and excellent produce - the bell peppers are so puny here!).  We are already thinking about how soon (and for how long) we will return to il bel paese...

I'll just take a moment here to pay tribute to Paolo, most excellent of travel companions (and husbands), without whose love and support my dual citizenship dream might never have become a reality.  I am not certain whether I'd have had the courage to pack up and move to another country, to live a very different kind of life, where I don't even speak the language, without him.  Thank you, my love ❤️

Lynk & Co and other things

Picking up the new car at the airport this past Tuesday was fairly uneventful; we checked out of our hotel at noon, and even though we weren't scheduled to pick up the car until 13:00, we decided to just walk across to the airport anyway.  As it turned out, the car was ready and waiting for us, yay.  And this is what we got:

This is a Lynk & Co 01.  We'd never heard of this maker before; it's a Swedish-Chinese brand.  According to what I've read online, it seems to share a lot in common with the Volvo XC40.  There is a heavy emphasis on internet connectivity and general Jetsons-ness; the infotainment screen is huge (almost as big as my iPad screen).  Weirdly, though, for such an Internet of Things kind of vehicle, the wireless charging pad in the car doesn't seem to work with my iPhone.  

I haven't driven it yet, but Paolo says it handles well.  It's classified as a compact SUV, so it's a little bigger than our previous car...which makes me a bit nervous, what with Paolo's penchant for trying to squeeze down tiny streets he has no business driving on.

Our drive home started out fine, although we did end up back on the A-1, albeit this time with the proper entrance ticket, so no additional fines were assessed.  I forget the amount of the actual toll, but it was certainly a lot less than €82,30.

We passed through some nice countryside; I attempted to get a few pictures from the passenger's point of view:

Not a great picture, but ahead is the Sanctuary Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows, in Castelpetroso, Isernia Province, Molise.  Apparently, in 1888, Our Lady appeared to some young shepherdesses somewhere nearby.  Either that, or perhaps they gathered the wrong kind of mushrooms while out herding their sheep...

The GPS in this car has a very calm and soothing voice; she sounds very trustworthy.  However, as it turns out, she gets easily confused by the mountains, the little farm roads, and so on...we got lost for an hour (while only about 30 minutes from home), thanks to her constant (devious?) recalculations.  We were afraid she was going to take us down some little tractor road and we'd suddenly find ourselves stuck in the middle of an olive grove just as night was falling.  As it was, we certainly got a very interesting tour of some of the more remote comuni of Campobasso province.  

Otherwise it's been a quiet week.  This morning, we woke up to another rainbow - so I was pretty sure I was going to have some news about my passport today:

Sure enough, I did get a message confirming that my passport is ready and will be forwarded to me ASAP.  I should hopefully have it by early next week!

In other news - I now have a Certificazione Verde - an Italian Green Pass (it's a Super Green Pass, actually, since I have had three jabs).  The Green Pass is a QR code with your Covid vaccination info, to be scanned when you go to any kind of venue that requires proof of vaccination (pretty much anywhere these days).  I didn't really need it, because the US's paper CDC card suffices in place of the Super Green Pass.  But I wanted to see if I could navigate the system and figure out how to get one on my own.  It turned to be a relatively simple process, once I reached out via email to the regional health department to ask (thanks to Google translate).  All I had to do was send an email to request it, along with copies of my Italian ID, my codice fiscale card (tax number), and a copy of my CDC vaccination card.  A few days later - that is, today - I got an email back directing me to download the IO app, which is a government app where you can do lots of stuff - I don't even know what all yet.  Once I had that set up:  boom, there was my Green Pass.  And I'm not even on the national health system.

This weekend I am thinking about attempting to make some homemade pasta.  I got the Pasta Grannies cookbook for Christmas, and I want to try making trofie, because it's literally two ingredients (flour and boiling water) and I don't need to roll it out or cut it.  We'll see!

Fiumicino

Last week, we made the decision to extend our stay here in Italy for another few months.  Our original return flight was booked months ago for January 18; since that time, Covid and its side effects - including the airline rescheduling and rerouting our flight such that we would have had a long and very undesirable layover in Hell at Heathrow, among other things - caused us to rethink our plans.  I spent about an hour and a half on the phone one day last week rescheduling our flight (it took an hour just to get through to a human being).  This sounds exasperating, but honestly, I couldn't be annoyed by the wait; those poor airline folks are super understaffed at the moment thanks to everyone being out sick, plus with so many flights being canceled and needing to be rebooked, I'm sure they're overwhelmed). Our apartment is paid through April (the rental had to be for a minimum of six months to meet residency requirements), so no problem there.  The car, however, was a bit of an issue.

Our car was a short-term leased Renault Captur; when we picked it up in October, I was assured the lease could be extended if necessary.  What they didn't tell me (and shame on me for not asking for more details) was that they would only extend for another 80 days - at €55 per day (almost $63) - making the per-day cost of the extension much higher than under the original lease.  No thanks.  So I did a little online comparison shopping (which wasn't easy, because we're limited to automatic cars as Paolo can't drive a manual) and eventually found a better deal with a Hertz rental.  I reached out to the folks at Renault and asked them if they cared to match Hertz's price; they declined.  Whatever.

The Renault needed to be returned in Fiumicino (this is the town where Rome's international airport is located); the Hertz car needs to be picked up at the counter in the airport.  Since with traffic, etc. it was about a 4.5 hour drive from our comune to the leasing office, we decided to book a hotel room overnight and pick up the new car the next day, rather than do all the driving in one day.  Fortunately, there is a Hilton that is literally right across the road from the airport terminal where the car rental offices are located - there is even a covered walkway from the hotel property that takes you right into the airport.

View from our room; the walkway to the airport is below our window, outside the frame of this shot

Although we did run through a bit of fog at one point (high up in the mountains), it was overall a fairly nice day for a drive, weather-wise.  I tried to take some pictures of different areas we drove though, but that's not always easy to do from a moving vehicle.  But here are a few snaps of the countryside I managed to capture:

In one town we drove through (somewhere in Isernia, the other province in Molise), Paolo had to navigate us through a pretty tricky intersection.  The tricky thing about it was that there was only one set of traffic lights, for the (to us) cross traffic.  I don't mean that the other traffic lights one would expect to see at a four point intersection were out - I mean they did not exist!  WTF?  Getting across that intersection was kind of like playing chicken.  Fortunately, we won, I guess.  

I will never understand driving in Italy.

We also sat in traffic for a bit at one point; it turned out that two tractor trailers somehow tangled at a roundabout, completely blocking the normal flow of vehicles - meaning that the carabinieri had to direct everyone around the accident scene.  Traffic traveling in the direction we were headed was forced to go the wrong way through the roundabout to get by.

Our GPS eventually brought us to the A1 Autostrada (she's a bitch like that sometimes).  The autostrade are toll roads for the most part.  This was our first time driving on the A1.  Unfortunately, Paolo entered via a "Telepass" lane, so didn't get a printed entrance ticket (Telepass is the Italian version of EZ Pass).  Without the ticket, we had an issue exiting the A1 - by "issue" I mean we were issued an €83,90 fine which needs to be paid online within 15 days.  Sigh.

Despite some very heavy traffic in certain areas, congestion around Rome in particular (think rush hour I-95 around Philly, my personal nightmare), and some confusion on the part of our GPS going around the roundabouts near the airport (damn her), we eventually made it to the Renault leasing office in Fiumicino (the town, not the airport) about 1/2 hour before our scheduled drop-off time.  There was no one at the desk when we walked in to the office, so we sat down to wait until someone showed up.  The guy arrived within about 10 minutes or so; he'd had another drop-off scheduled right before ours.  He took care of that client, then dealt with us.

Admittedly, I was a little worried about what they might say (or charge us) relating to the scratches on the car from our little misadventure in Larino; in the end, I don't think the guy even looked at the car.  He had me sign a form to return the car to them, and there was a section on the paperwork where they are supposed to indicate any damage...and that was left blank.  Whew!  On the other hand, the way Italians drive and park, I'm guessing vehicles are rarely returned wholly intact.  Once the paperwork was complete, we hopped in a van (along with his other client) and he dropped us at our respective hotels. 

So here we are ensconced in our comfy room at the Hilton; tomorrow we will cross over to the airport via the walkway, pick up our new car, and head home.  Hopefully the new GPS will know to avoid the A1, and also be better at navigating roundabouts.  I'll end this with a couple of pictures from dinner, and one of Leonardo da Vinci, for whom the airport is named (the actual full name of the airport is Aeroporto Internazionale di Roma–Fiumicino "Leonardo da Vinci"):

Paolo is looking grumpy because I wouldn't let him have the rolls with seeds that he is not supposed to eat

Paolo looking happier because he got pasta with octopus, which is one of his favorites

Leo.  I can't figure out whether his hands are actually bigger than his head, or if it's an optical illusion.