Crossing the Pond

 CROSSING THE POND

The long flight didn't scare us because, as I mentioned earlier, we have flown to Australia and New Zealand.  Flights from the Western US to either require double the time that flying across the Atlantic to Europe takes. Nevertheless, flying was one of those things that could make or break the trip. Would our flights be on time and not cost us a connection?  Would our bags make it?  We chose to fly out of Atlanta, which is a 4:30 drive for us, plus we lose an hour entering the Eastern Time Zone. Additionally, to get the business class flights we wanted on the days we needed to travel, we had "hopscotch" itineraries, i.e., Atlanta to DC to  Paris to Naples going over and Rome to Amsterdam to NYC to Atlanta returning.  We flew Delta domestically and Air France internationally to Italy and returned via KLM and again Delta in the US.  (As you might know or expect, Delta, Air France, and KLM are partner airlines.)

Everything clicked on our flights.  To save a little money we parked offsite at The Parking Spot, which provided a covered parking space and a shuttle to the airport (a drive of maybe 15 minutes).  Our flight left on time, and starting off with a glass of wine in comfortable, wider business class seats on Delta took the edge off. 

Another advantage of flying business class, which our European  traveler friends had told us about, is that you have access to your airline's (and their partners') lounges (free food and drink, comfortable seating, clean restrooms) at the airports. Our layover at Dulles was just over 2 1/2 hours, so we found the Air France lounge nearest our departure gate.  Upon confirming our flight weeks ago we had been able to order dinner for our flight online, but the staff at the lounge asked if we wanted to go ahead and dine before boarding.  It didn't take us too long to realize that eating would cut into our sleeping time on the flight, so we took advantage of the early dinner offer.  

The Air France flight to Paris was first class in every sense of the word.  Susan and I each had what looked like a small cabin on a Disney ride with reclining seats (to a full 180 degrees) and a console with TV, movies, flight info, phone charger, etc.  The friendly and efficient staff brought us wine and answered any questions we had.  Once we had reached cruising altitude out of DC we were given eye shades and ear plugs, and we reclined our seats and slept about 5 - 6 of the 7 hours of our flight.  We were offered coffee and a variety of breakfast options as we approached Paris. It was easily the most comfortable long distance flight we've ever had.  

Our layover in Paris was 4 1/2 hours.  We wandered around Charles de Gaulle, which is quite a large airport, found our terminal for our next leg of our flight, and went through customs. We found the French customs/security personnel to be just as curt, businesslike, and deliberate as their American counterparts typically are -- definitely not La Welcome Wagon du Francaise.  But we made it through and forged ahead to the food court and tried a light French lunch consisting mainly of pastries.  As our bodies began to remind us that we'd actually left home almost 24 hours before, our flight to Naples was called ... again on time.  We prayed that our bags were having similar good fortune.

The Air France flight to Naples was aboard an older airliner, and business class was considerably less elegant and roomy than on the trans-Atlantic flight -- basically the middle seat of 3 was kept empty.  We had a nice sandwich, but mostly they left us alone to doze.  In just over 2 hours we landed in Naples. Again, on time ... and so were our bags! The airport was a bit shabby, and I'm yet to know whether we were actually supposed to have gone through some sort of customs or security checkpoint.  If so, oops! We just grabbed our bags and saw someone outside an exit waving a sign with "Tauck" and our surname on it. Tauck had just passed their first test!  The young man with the sign had a car service, and he loaded our bags into his car, offered us a bottle of water, and began driving us toward Positano.

The drive to Positano was alternatingly surprising and educational. Young Rodrigo (?) was friendly and accommodating.  However, he spoke about as much English as Susan and I did Italian, i.e., closer to none than some.  We both struggled gamely to communicate for awhile, then settled into a comfortable silence. (That Google Translate app was going to be handy after all.)  Unfortunately this was where our luck with being on time ran out.  We had arrived in Naples on the day of a championship soccer game hosted by Napoli, the local team; and the roads were crowded.  On top of that the predictedsurge of tourists for the Amalfi Coast proved to be spot on; the forecast that the onslaught would begin in June was not. [Those damn tourists!  What were they doing here on April 29?!?] The drive to Positano was estimated by Google Maps to take an hour; our driver said the traffic was bad, and it would take more like 2 hours.  This troubled me, a plan ahead, Be Prepared Eagle Scout, who had made a reservation for a relaxing dinner to begin our 50th anniversary trip at a neat looking rooftop restaurant allegedly about a 20 minute walk from our hotel for 90 minutes after our planned arrival.  We'd be late. 

A couple of impressions on the trip:  1) The roads along the coast in Campania (the Italian region we were in) were very narrow and winding and often ran along the sides of steep cliffs.  2) Motorcycle drivers in Italy make Evel Knievel look like a cautious, reasonable man.  As we puttered along the allegedly 2-lane road to Positano, we saw lots of attractive little buildings that apparently were fairly old. Quite frequently young men on motorcycles would pass us by straddling the narrow space between us and oncoming vehicles in a "Death, be not proud!" maneuver. (We learned later that the death rate among teenage male motorcyclists in Italy is quite high.) The language barrier between us and our driver did result in one fortuitous event -- stopping at cliffside so he could take Susan's and my photo with the sea and coastline as a backdrop.  That was one time I was glad he didn't understand "no, thanks" in English.

After having traveled about 20 hours (~25 counting the drive from our house to the Atlanta airport), we arrived at our first hotel, Le Agave Positano. It seemed small and  unimpressive as we looked down from from the cliffside highway, but that impression quickly changed. It was long vertically and quite elegant. The staff greeted us warmly and immediately encouraged us to dine with them rather than taking the shuttle into town to dine with the place where we had had reservations. I was afraid they were just trying to get us to dine at their presumably high-priced restaurant, but we soon learned that they were genuinely being helpful. When I told them our plan about walking, they looked at us as if we were nuts. They called the place where we had made reservations and first postponed then canceled for us, booked us a place into their restaurant, and gave us our key and directions.  We were immediately confused by the directions because, stepping on the elevator, we found that the buttons for some floors were negative numbers! Nevertheless we found our room.  

Our room had a patio with a spectacular view -- as are all views of Positano.  For a few minutes we just soaked it all in, then we had showers (quite refreshing after having traveled literally all day), changed clothes, and headed to dinner.  There was a virtual SWAT team of staff hovering over us, and they made certain we were well fed and happy.  I think we had 7 courses, and everything was delicious. Nice wine too. Afterwards we waddled back to the room and tried to catch up on our sleep.