italy journal #1: along for the ride

THURSDAY
18 gennaio 2018

Today was a long day of flying. Our flight plan was: SLC --> Denver --> Newark/New York --> Rome, with only 40 minutes between each layover. We realized it was our first time on a plane together for a vacation rather than work!

When we landed in Denver, a bit early, we got a text saying that our connecting flight to New York was going to be an hour late! This was bad news because it meant we would land in New York with only two minutes left to board our flight to Rome. Giuseppe and I talked about how worried we were as we went to go talk to customer service. The customer service rep for United Airlines informed us that they were already aware of our situation and had already arranged for us to get on a flight to Frankfurt if we arrived in New York and the gates were closed, which would most likely be the case. Even with the connection in Frankfurt, we would arrive in Rome only 4 hours behind schedule! I was impressed with how fast United Airlines was able to solve that and that it was such a convenient switch, not like we would need to hang out in an airport for a whole day or something, which I was kind of expecting.
After walking away from the customer service representative Giuseppe teased me, “You were so worried! All for nothing!” I was confused because it seemed like he was the worried one and so I was acting worried too. Why? I don't know, maybe to seem like I cared more?
I told him this and we argued about who was more worried before we discovered that we were both just acting worried in order to validate each other! We thought this was hilarious. Apparently neither of us are the type to get worked up over this kind of thing, but we thought we needed to act worried for the other person. Does that even make sense? I guess neither of us are the kind of people to get worked up over stuff like this, we’re just along for the ride. You learn something new about each other every day!

So with that discovery, we enjoyed hanging out in the airport for a bit and getting lunch.

Our flight to New York got delayed even more, so we knew there was no chance we were going to make it on our original fight to Rome.  So when we landed in New York, we took our time getting off the plane, expecting to hang out at the airport for a few hours before taking off to Germany. When we finally exited the gate (it took forever because we were near the back of the plane), we heard a voice on the intercom say “all passengers on flight number 513 from Denver headed onto flight number 40 to Rome have one minute to get to the gate before it closes.” What?! Apparently there had been a small maintenance issue and the flight to Rome was delayed! I looked at the closest screen and quickly found our gate number. We sprinted! It was so fun weaving past people saying, "excuse me! excuse me! excuse me!" Luckily the gate was nearby and we made it in time! What a rush. 

The flight crew kept telling us, “you guys are sooooo lucky!” and referred to us as the lucky Denver passengers. In the end, we didn’t need to sprint through the airport because the maintenance problem persisted and we were stuck on the plane for an hour before finally taking off. So that was rough. The flight was fine, it was a red eye but of course it was extremely difficult to fall asleep in those uncomfortable seats. There is nothing worse than needing to sleep on a plane, but we didn't mind too much because we were just so excited to get there.