Pbenjay's Blog

So good to me.  Monday mornin’ , it was all I hoped it could be….

Peter left for Rome very early Monday morning, hitching a ride with two other expats heading out of Guardia.  Luigi (Pasquale’s father) drove the trio to Telese, the nearest town with train service.

It started out all right;  the alarm went off, he had packed the night before.  I mumbled from the bed, do you have your passport? Pills? Take a banana, I love you, make sure you close the door.  And went back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, he called in a real panic!  He didn’t have his passport, it was 90 degrees in Rome and he was soaking wet from the long walk from the Termini to the somewhat obscure hotel I had found.

What do you mean you don’t have your passport?  You heard me I don’t have it.  Well of course I said, you must have it.  However Peter claimed he searched all of his bags.  Thankfully, the desk clerk let him in so he could go to the room and search thoroughly because groping in his suitcases in the lobby was difficult.  I looked in the night stand drawers and all around the bedroom.  Now we were both in a panic!  He thought he would have to come back by train and I said, why, it’s not here!  Now I know that when I’m frantic and think I’ve lost something, I keep looking in the places where it should be and it isn’t – until it is!  While we were talking, he kept searching and there it was, tucked into a small zippered pocket he hadn’t noticed before.  Thank God, that disaster was averted.

On a lighter note, when the the trio had to change trains in Caserta, Kelly and Mike had a two page printout for their tickets and Peter had one, uh oh…. Kelly to the rescue.  He calls Pasquale (who had printed Peter’s ticket out the day before) who says, “Turn it over”! Lol.

Joel was expected to land in Naples at 7:30pm.  I had arranged for Pasquale to pick him up.  About 5:00I get a frantic call from Joel ( it’s been that kind of a day), saying he got off the plane in Milan and has no ticket to go to Naples, and the flight number on his itinerary is NOT on the departure board!  OMG 😮 So back and forth we go with: well find an Air Italy desk, there are no desks here only signs for gates, there must be maybe a sign for departures, go there where people check in, I told you I’m in a part of the terminal where there is nothing, but shops, I’m screwed. Go into a retail shop..what good is that going to do? Listen to me, go into a shop they all speak English, ask where you can get information about Air Italy! OK.  They send him to some gate where, yes the flight number was changed, guess they were keeping it a secret!  Joel sends me a text saying he is getting on plane 6:15.  I show this to Pasquale and he searches the departing flights from Milan to Naples and nothing is leaving then.  Texting Joel is futile – I think he must be on the plane already since it is now like 6:10.  Pasquale continues to search for a flight leaving Milan and I’m saying maybe we should go now so we are there when he lands.  I say, please call the Naples airport they must know when planes are landing!   Come to find out Pasquale never even heard of Air Italy!!! Now as I am looking at his computer screen, I see a flight from Milan, Flight #615! Geez Louise, Joel never made it clear that the new flight number was 615 or that he was getting on the plane 6:15 and you saw how he texted it.  Color me exasperated.  So the computer says the plane will land at 7:40 which means we should be on the road already, but while we were scrolling through the list of flights, he DID call the airport.  It took a while but finally he got a hold of someone who looked up the flight and said that plane wasn’t arriving till 9:30pm because it was going to stop in Rome on the way to Naples.  Thank God we called.

So time for a quick chicken dinner with Michael and then Pasquale and I took off for Naples Airport.  If you think your airport like LaGuardia in NY or West Palm in FLA where they don’t want you to stop for a minute to pick someone up with their luggage is tough, then don’t go to Naples Airport.  The police regularly come through and make all the cars move that are semi-parked and waiting for an arrival and don’t want to pay exorbitant parking fees.

Luckily I hopped out of the car, found Joel in an instant, and we were on our way.  Joel had now been traveling for 17 hours through at least 4 time zones and he was bleary-eyed and hungry.  We stopped for pizza and gelato on the way home and we got home just after midnight.  The last of  Monday’s madness.