Airports

After getting up at 3am for my final run up to the Piazzale Michelangelo with Seth, it has been about 32 hours since I said good bye to him, Lorenzo, and the apartment, and caught the 6am cab to the Florence Airport. However, I still have not arrived in Colorado....

Since I left the house yesterday I never was able to relax because there were hurdles during the entire trip, starting with a passport check in Florence. I was almost certain they would notice I didn't have a visa to be in Italy for so long and that I would be in big trouble. I never got a permesso (permission to stay in the country), so for the past 7 months I have been illegal. Well, they didn't seem to care and they didn't ask any questions. In fact, when I entered the country back in August they never even asked to see my passport, so I probably didn't have anything to worry about.

After arriving in London I was too tired to do much during the 7-hour layover besides catnap and watch the BBC. Turns out there were big strikes across the UK and they were predicting hold-ups in the airports, but in fact there were none. This didn't stop the budget airline I was flying with, Iceland Express, from having a 2-hour delay. Also, as I checked into the flight I had to arrange my bags so that my carry-on backpack only weighed 10kg. Out of all the budget airlines we have flown with, this was the first to actually weigh the carry on. And, to give some perspective, 10kg is almost nothing. It seriously was only one full backpack. For every 1kg of weight over, they would charge 11euro. I had my 10kg backpack plus a 6kg backpack full of mostly food (they wouldn't feed us on the planes--in fact, I was only given water. A soda would have been $2). I thought it was so ridiculous that they would weigh carry-ons, even if they were only full of food for lunch and dinner, that I hid the backpack behind the counter so they wouldn't weigh it and charge me 66euro.

I propose that if an airline insists on weighing a carry on, they might as well make weight restrictions for people, too. It isn't fair that a person weighing twice as much as me (which is not uncommon, especially in the US), to be able to bring the same amount of weight onto the plane. They should make a rule like the total weight of both passenger and carry on baggage can not be greater than, say, 210lb. This rewards people for being within a relatively healthy weight range and encourages people to drop a few pounds if they need to. Everyone wins. However, I imagine this idea would be just as popular as my idea of taxing families with more than two kids, but this is a different topic...

Anyways, I made it onto the plane with my smuggled lunch, but the connecting flight in Iceland also ended up being delayed two hours. I don't understand the hold up--it took nearly 45min just to board the plane, then the plane sat on the runway for another large amount of time. All the while I was flipping out because I was going to miss my final flight to CO, which was also the final flight of the night. Well, I did miss my flight from Boston to Denver, and I did have to rebook for this morning. I was pleased though that they at least gave me a 'one-time courtesy re-booking' so that I didn't have to buy another $240 ticket. (Thank you, JetBlue!)

So, I have been hanging out in Logan since then. At least they have free wireless (woohoo!), but unfortunately no showers or lockers, so I couldn't go for a jog. I slept on a bench at an Au Bon Pain in the food court, but they were doing some construction nearby so it was very loud, and then the cafe opened at 4am so I just decided to get up. I can at least sleep on the plane.