It's Italian!

When I booked a trip to Italy for our professional society's annual meeting this week, I forgot to do things like add a day or so for sightseeing or make sure I could get from my hotel to the airport on a schedule that might also include sleep. Now that I've been here a couple of days, I'm *really* resenting the former, although I've sort of become resigned to the latter.

I left Texas early Thursday morning so I could make Florence by Friday and my committee meeting Saturday. I've make enough flights now not to have my stomach flip-flop on take-off and landing, and most of my flights have been pretty good. My first international flight was on a freezing plane to Holland, where the woman behind me seemed to complain the entire flight because I leaned my seat back (although I carefully made sure it was only slightly tilted in an effort to shut her up; she still called the flight attendant repeatedly and demanded that I be told to stop leaning back so far, and the attendants patiently explained that I was barely away from upright). My next three trips were all "business class" to our campus at Qatar, where I was treated royally except for the time I nearly missed a flight in Paris because I stopped to use the restroom and brush my teeth between planes. (Then we sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes for reasons I never learned after we boarded.)

This trip was easy from College Station to Houston, where I had a layover of several hours before heading to Newark, NJ. Once there, I was told my gate had changed, and I rushed from the landing gate to the takeoff gate. I did have the presence of mind to ask if I had time for a potty stop, which I was granted, but I boarded pretty long after my row had been called. Just about the time we got the plane filled, the rains came. And came. And came. Since the weather in America moves the same way we were traveling (west to east), we had to wait for the storm to pass over NJ and over the Atlantic far enough for us to gain altitude and fly over it to Rome. Two hours on the tarmac is yet a different experience.

Once we got up. the attendants got about supper for us as quickly as they could. When they got to me, the young man asked, "What do you want?," to which I replied, "What do you have?" He made an exasperated remark about people not listening because of their headsets, and said, "We're out of the chicken, so all we have is meat and pasta. Do you want it or not?" I said, "That's not the same question. If you only have one item, you might ask me whether I want it or not, not 'What do you want.' Yes, if that's all you got, that's what I'll have." He handed me a tray and went on, shaking his head and muttering.

My diet for the day wasn't looking too good. I had started with my usual morning milk, and I had splurged on a cinnamon pretzel when I got to the Houston airport, but I had worked on my computer during that whole layover, and I really hadn't much digested the pretzel when our flight took off. The meal on that flight was a small "burrito" that was mostly a tortilla with a little Spanish rice and maybe some hamburger, and a bag of carrots with a miniature Twix for dessert. Still, the "rodeo mac" and lettuce they called salad wasn't much, and with a pretzel, tortilla, and rice already down for the day, I wasn't at all sure the macaroni was a good idea with my tendency toward hypoglycemia. I ate what I could and settled in for the long flight. The movie was the updated Karate Kid that I had wanted to see anyway, so I was fine for a while.

Shortly after the cabin lights dimmed for the night, my head started to swim and I felt nauseated. I tried just leaning back and closing my eyes, but that didn't help. I tried leaning down and putting my face on my knees, but that didn't do it. I had tucked a little packet of peanut butter into my carry on "liquids" bag, but I was so dry I couldn't choke that down, either. (Peanut butter is usually my first line of defense against problems with my blood sugar, but my symptoms could also have been dehydration because of the little amount of fluids I had gotten on the planes.) I finally gave up and signaled the attendants.

The first one was comforting and assured me she'd be back with the milk I had requested, and a couple of minutes after that, she had a cup of water for me, too. Ten or 15 minutes later I was still pretty woozy, so I called for more milk, which at least seemed to balance me back out enough to calm both my tummy and my dizziness. Aside from the fact that I spent the rest of the flight sort of wadded up on my tray table with my head twisted awkwardly into the aisle, I at least survived the rest of the night without further incident.

I had stuffed a small carry-on with things I didn't want to check, and I had my netbook bag under the seat in front of me, with my liquids (including the peanut butter and the little bit of makeup I wear) in it. I had pulled out my raincoat at some point because the plane was, again, way too cold, and between the frustration of the night before, having to round up the computer, my headset, the raincoat, and the carry-on, I somehow managed to leave the liquids on the plane—so I'm sort of doing Italy naked.

To get from Rome to Florence, I had to take two trains. The trains were comfortable and fast, but hauling a big bag (with a big camera bag in it I wish I hadn't even bought, much less brought with me) and my carry-on up and down the stairs on and off the trains was not in my range of great fun. I can hardly wait to undo that on the way back to Rome.

Since I was completely lost when I arrived, I went out the back door of the Florence train station, drug my bags a half-block or so in the wrong direction from my hotel, then managed to take a couple of other wrong turns before I found the tiny little doorway I've been calling "home" for a couple of days now. At least that's one part of my trip home I can manage: the "front" door to the station is only a couple of blocks away!