On the way...

Or so I thought. For once I was not the last one to the airport. One of our group got his passport at 12:30pm on the day that we left. The flight left at 3:20. Just glad it wasn't me. We got into Amsterdam early for once, which later turned out not to be the best idea. We unloaded the plane, got thru customs with the greatest of ease, and then found out...apparently all flights into the entire country of Italy were cancelled. The air traffic controllers were on strike. Of course they were. What else could be expected? After all, this is a trip that I'm on. So 12.5 hours later, I got on a plane, luckily direct to Rome. Others were not so lucky. In total it took 3 flights, 1 thru Paris, to get all 13 of us into Rome and to the hotel. The last ones arrived about 2am and without some luggage. Oof.

But we all arrived, and the hotel is quite nice. Lucky for me, the taxi driver was very friendly and showed me the bus station and the closest subway stop. That turned out to be extremely fortituous later.