Coming soon, photos and a mini
travelogue of my recent trip to Italy with my sister. In the meantime, here are
some things I learned on the trip.
1. If,
on your flight to India two years ago, you thought you had quite a bit of time
left on your passport, “quite a bit” will turn out to have been less than two
years.
2. Yes,
you can get a passport renewed within 24 hours in the metro New York area, but
only if you have an extraordinary nephew and wonderful good friend who live in
Westport and Stamford, CT, respectively.
3. Yes,
your sister will still be speaking to you when she has to go on ahead without
you for a day and drive back to the airport to pick you up when she is still
jet lagged from her own flight. (You need to co-sign the car rental papers in
person.)
4. Those
who said you don’t need an International Driver’s Permit, just a U.S. driver’s
license for a car rental were 100% correct. Which is too bad, because that
photo they took at AAA was awesome. (The one taken at the CVS in Stamford at
11:30 pm for the emergency passport renewal, on the other hand, looks exactly
like how you felt at that point.)
5. Those
who told you not to get Amex Travelers Checks because no one accepts them
anymore were also 100% correct. (And, yes, they are the same people who nixed
the idea of an International Driver’s Permit.)
6. If
there is a seat on a regional flight that is below the cubby with the equipment
for the flight attendant’s emergency demo and opposite the cubby with two
oxygen tanks, it will be assigned to you. Since you boarded early, you were
able to find an empty overhead for your carryon that was still in the same
aircraft.
But
that inch you shrank over the past two years was enough to make you struggle to
reach those bins.
7. If
there is a seat on the transatlantic flight that has a broken footrest, it will
be yours. Ditto for the hinky electronics that won’t let you easily drag a playing
card where you want while playing solitaire.
8. If
you ask five people in Puglia (Tabacchi shop owners, hotel concierge, postal
clerk) how much it costs to send a postcard to the U.S., you’ll get five
different answers.
9. If
you bring postcards home to mail them after you get back, you’ll need to trim
them to get the postcard rate. It turns out most Italian postcards are slightly
larger than the USPS template allows. Or at least the ones you bought.
10. You can
still have a fabulous trip even if it started out with a fiasco of your own
making. But that’s only because your sister has been studying Italian and was
willing to be your travel agent, trip planner, banker, accountant and
translator.
