Squished for 12 Hours

Italy Travelog #2
Flying SFO-FCO - Saturday, 24 May 2025, ??am

One of the least exciting things about overseas travel is flying to and from. I mean, it's novel the first time. And an occasional upgrade to international first class sure can feel special. But the rest of the time, riding in the back of the plane, it's just drudgery.

Now, United Airlines isn't the worst carrier to fly, at least for us. One benefit of my lifetime status is free access to Economy Plus seating. It's like regular economy but with a few extra inches of legroom. That sure helps, though what would also help was if United hadn't refitted their 777 aircraft several years ago to cram in 10 seats across instead of just 9. Now hip- and shoulder room are tight.

This trip I couldn't even score an aisle seat. I was in a middle. When we booked 6 weeks ahead, middles were all that was available. And not even two middles together, just scattered middles. This is similar to when I chose not to fly United to New York City a few months ago. When only middles are left at booking time, I'll consider another airline. Alas, my other favorite airline doesn't fly to Europe, so here I am on United. And Hawk is here, too, but a few rows away.

My row of 4 seats across is like a who's-who of people you don't want to share a row with on an airplane. I'm kind of tall, 6'1", and definitely overweight. I am the shortest person in my row. And the 6'5" guy next to me is holding a baby. A baby that spent the entire boarding process crying for his mama. By the time he was done crying his face was literally half covered in snot. At least his mama, in another row, is holding him most of the time. Because the kid sure hates daddy.

Oh, and my TV screen doesn't work. ...No problem; I was planning to watch movies through the app on my iPad. Except the United app is crashing every 3 minutes. And when I restart it, it totally forgets where I was in my movie. Actually, it doesn't totally forget... it somehow remembers where I was in a movie I watched two months ago and helpfully cues that one up for me. 🙄

It's going to be a long flight.

In Italy for 10 minutes, already got ripped off

Italy Travelog #3
At FCO Airport - Saturday, 24 May 2025, 1:50pm

I've joked for many years that certain countries in Europe *cough* Greece and Italy *cough* treat scamming tourists as a national pastime. I'm an experienced enough traveler that I'm savvy to many potential scams. But the problem with being in a scam-heavy place is that you've got to be on your guard constantly. I made the mistake of not triple-checking my transaction at an ATM and got ripped off.

Yes, the ATM charged me a fee for giving me my own money. It was €4.95. I knew it was going to be like that. What got me was what the ATM slipped in near the end of the transaction. It showed me the amount of my withdrawal in Euro, the amount debited from my account in USD, and asked me to confirm. Foolishly— or, rather, not on my guard every fucking second because everyone is trying to rip you off when you so much as blink— I accepted the conversion without whipping out my calculator to check the math. The fuckers gave me .75EUR to the dollar. The normal bank exchange rate today is 0.88. So on top of the €4.95 flat fee I also paid a 15% vig.

I've been in this country for 10 minutes and already I've been scammed.

Fuck Italy.

The Rome Cavalieri

Italy Travelog #4
Rome Cavalieri hotel - Saturday, 24 May 2025, 4pm

Around 3pm today we arrived at the Rome Cavalieri. It's a Waldorf Astoria hotel, so we had reasonably high expectations. Recall that our other W-A experience was the Waldorf Astoria Pedregal in Los Cabos, MX— where we had an amazing arrival experience, a very bougie lunch, and later, a touching "Happy Retirement Ms. Hawk" card.



Compared to the Pedregal hotel, which was an over-the-top, 5-star experience, the Rome Cavalieri is merely a solid 4.5 star hotel. Everything is appropriately swank— including the prices in the restaurants 😱— but, for example, we had to *gasp* wait in line at the front desk to check in. (At the 5 star hotel, staff opened the car door for us, greeted us by name, and escorted us to a private table with cocktails where the concierge came to us to deliver our keys.)



Our room is suitably luxurious, and spacious, though again without the over-the-top-ness of the W-A Pedregal. Here the balcony with a private pool and a beach vidw is replaced by a balcony with... -out a private pool or a beach view. 😅

Not that there's even a beach, anyway. We're in Rome. Though this hotel is right up the hill from Vatican City. If we were on a higher floor we'd be able to see it from our balcony.

As we explored the hotel grounds a bit this afternoon we found a hawk.



Yup, there's a hawk sitting on a railing on the terrace overlooking the pool area. As you can see from the jess to the left of the bird's feet, though, it's not a random hawk; it's kept by a falconer. The falconer wasn't around this afternoon so we spent some time admiring the bird by ourselves without knowing what species of hawk or falcon it is. Hawk noted that our iPhones will identify what we're taking a picture of, if they can. Her iPhone told her, "bird". Thanks, Apple, we were confused for a moment there that it might be a flower. Apparently that AI feature was implemented by the same team that created the original icon for Apple Maps showing a route of jumping off a bridge into busy interstate highway 280 traffic.