July 17, 2007 Travel "experiences"

We are chalking up the frustrations of traveling as "lessons learned" for future reference. We had a few of those today.

Our first night in Rome was spent at the Hilton Hotel adjacent to the airport. Deanne had Hilton points saved up from her working years and that allowed us to get a free room and soundly beat our 100 Euro room budget. Of, course, staying at a Hilton is quite expensive for other things, so we exceeded our food budget by enough to make up for the free room. Breakfast was fixed price at 48 Euros, or $54 for the two of us. Ouch! But that wasn't the lesson. That came when we left the hotel to get to Rome's small commuter airport, Ciampino. After asking twice at the Hilton, we were assured the best way to travel there is by taxi (they estimated the fare at 30 Euros, approximately $40). We hopped in the cab they called for us and was told after our half hour ride that we owed 60 Euros or $80. Lesson: always negotiate the rate in advance in Rome. We ended up having an Italian argument with him and agreeing to 50 Euros, chalking that up to a lesson learned.

Our second lesson of the day.... don't stand in a line on an assumption that you belong there. After we disembarked in Madrid from our cheap 50 Euro flight from Rome to Madrid, we lined up with all of the other passengers from our flight for a line we thought was immigration. Given our position at the back of a long, hardly moving line, we decided to step out of line and use the restrooms. When we got back in line, our fellow passengers were gone and replaced by many more people. We stood in this line for forty-five minutes, slowly making our way toward the sign identifying the exit to the boarding area. When we finally got to the front of the line we realized that we were in line to board a flight to Oslo, and that we could have walked by all of these people to exit this room one hour earlier.

Unfortunately the exit we walked out of took us to the wrong baggage claim and we had to walk for a good fifteen or twenty minutes to find the proper baggage claim, where we had the good fortune to find our bags waiting for us in the unclaimed baggage area. It seems that the silver lining in this story is that if you DO happen to stand in the worng line for an hour, then exit into the wrong terminal's baggage claim, when you finally get to the right place you won't have to wait for your baggage. It will either be there or it will have been stolen already.

With our baggage in hand we made it through the airport, back tracking to the original terminal we had accidentally entered. We found the Madrid Metro which we recommend above any other metros either of us have ever taken. It is clean and cool on a hot day, with escalators instead of stairs to navigate your wheelie bags.

After only one Metro transfer we made it to the train station and booked our sleeper car on the train to Lisbon. The reservation agent who spoke no English (although we hope he understood ours when he booked our reservation) apparently understood that we wanted a double sleeper. We are sitting in the train terminal writing this, so next time we log in we'll let you know what sleeping on the train is like. We leave at 10:45 tonight and arrive in Lisbon at 8:00 am.