Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I haven't even caught up with my backlog of blogs from our trip to Italy last week (they're held up on my time to deal with touching up photos) but already I'm ready with a retrospective. Here are Five Things:

1. Despite a few frustrations around the edges of the trip and a few things that went wrong with the parts my company planned, I very much appreciate being named to Club and getting to go on this trip. There were times I grumbled (privately), Maybe I should skip this trip and plan my own. Well, that would've been expensive. Just the flights alone would've cost us $5,000. The three hotel nights that were included plus the food and misc. expenses were worth another $2,500.


2. The highlight of the trip was our 2½ days in Rome. This was a side-trip we planned— and mostly paid for— on our own. (The Company let us book a stopover on the flights they paid for.) We hired private tours for the Colosseum, ruins of Caesar's palace, the Roman Forum, and Vatican City (the part that's still in my backlog), and augmented that with trekking to the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon (also in backlog) on our own.


3. Hiring private tour guides was expensive, eye-wateringly expensive in the case of the Vatican tour, which cost us over $1,200, but there's real value in it. With guides we saved the time of having to do lots of research and planning ourselves, we avoided waiting in lines and wandering around trying to figure out where to go, and we had someone who helped us ensure we saw the best things we could. Yeah, we could have cut the costs maybe in half by booking group tours instead, but we've had mixed experiences with even smaller, 12 person sized group tours. When time's limited, when it might be years, if ever, before you go back to that place again, go big.


4. Our "beach" resort stay, the part paid for by the company, reminded me that when you're at the beach there's an enormous different in really being at the beach. If you can't just walk out the door of the building, across a pool area, and be on the sand, you might as well stay a few miles away and drive to the beach. At the resort in Chia, Sardinia, it literally was a drive; the beach was 4km away from the resort hotel! As a consequence we went to the beach just once. We could have had more fun going back to our favorite splashy pool resort in Phoenix instead.


5. As much fun as visiting Italy/Rome was, and as little a fraction of the whole as we saw, we're kind of done with it. We're definitely not feeling, "Ooh, let's plan another trip to Rome!" Partly that's because we saw the highlights we cared about; partly it's because there's so much else in the world we want to see, too! I could see returning to Italy specifically for Pompeii, to see the ruins; Venice, for its unique canals; and maybe Florence, for its Renaissance architecture. But I don't think I'd want to spend more than a few days in each.

My on-time flight to Phoenix yesterday was an anomaly. I thought about that as things worked so smoothly— I'd better enjoy this, because it's not the norm. (Except I forgot to pack a shirt.) Because usually this is how things go when flying Southwest:



Today it's back to normal. I got a text as early as 11:16am that my 6:30pm flight was delayed. At first it was a 2 hour delay. Then it became a 30 minute delay. Then 2 hours again. Then 1 hour. Then 90 minutes. The inbound aircraft is in the air now, so that 90 minute delay should hold steady. Thus my 26 hours in Phoenix becomes 27.5, and I won't be getting home— as in, home-home—until almost 10:30pm.

Ugh.

And I've got a full schedule tomorrow starting with a 7am meeting.

Well, at least I get to kick up my heels at PHX airport. But I wish I could kick them up at home, in bed.

This afternoon I flew to Phoenix. I'm in town for 26 hours, flying home tomorrow at 6:30pm. In between now and then I'll meet colleagues for dinner tonight ahead of a meeting with a major customer tomorrow.

This trip comes hot on the heels of returning from Club on Saturday evening. I haven't even finished blogging about that trip. Now, after 1/2 day at work, I'm back on the road again.

I considered making this a same-day, out-and-back trip to Phoenix. My customer meeting tomorrow is late enough that I could have caught a morning flight SJC-PHX and gotten to their office in time. ...In time if the flight is mostly on-time. Which... who knows. Things went super smooth with my trip today. I left home for SJC airport at 1:15pm, caught a 2:30 flight, landed at 4:30, and arrived at my hotel just after 5. But who knows if a morning flight tomorrow would go as smoothly. Flying out to Phoenix today heads off the possibility of scheduling trouble there.

The tradeoff, of course, is that traveling today means a night away from home. I discussed this tradeoff with Hawk when I was booking reservations two weeks ago. "You should totally go out the day before and have dinner with your colleagues," she answered.

Being in Phoenix tonight isn't just about dinner with colleagues. That dinner will be a working dinner, BTW. We'll discuss plans for how to present in a lengthy meeting with a major customer tomorrow. And being here tonight also means that instead of spending tomorrow morning traveling I can join & participate in some important internal meetings.

Italy Travelog #28
36,000' over the Mediterranean - Saturday, 31 May 2025, 9:30am

Today was an early morning for us. It's our travel day home from Sardinia.

We began with alarms set for 5:15am to prepare for a 6:15 shuttle ride to the airport. We'd packed last night so all we had to do in the room this morning was eat breakfast— with packaged food and some drinks we'd purchased yesterday— and toss the last few items in our bags.

I had planned 15 minutes to check out, which was wise because even though the front desk was just steps away from our room there was a problem with the bill. The resort basically charged us twice for lunch at the pool on Thursday. Except the second time they charged us the bill was even higher; they'd added someone else's drink onto it, too. I'm glad I allowed time to check it and argue about it, as the mistake was over $100.

The shuttle to CAG airport took about an hour. We shared the ride with one of my sales colleagues and his wife. We chatted amiably during the ride, discussing the highs and lows of the week's trip, comparing notes on what we'd seen when visiting Rome (they'd visited years ago; we went earlier this week), and talking about how the countryside in Sardinia resembles the remote Central Coast area of California. (Latitude-wise, Cagliari is a bit north of San Francisco.)

We arrived at the airport to find a different scene than we left on Tuesday.



The airport's not that huge.  It reminds me of a high school gymnasium, if a high school gym were full of gift shops and food counters. But where it was quiet and relaxed when we landed on Tuesday, this morning at 7:30am it was a buzzing scrum.

If you told me we were departing a different airport than we'd arrived, I almost would've believe you. Almost, because I have too strong a sense of direction. But it sure didn't look like the place we landed. We roamed the upstairs concourse then headed downstairs to find a quieter place to sit for 45 minutes or so. Our gate was downstairs, anyway.



Another thing that was different about departing than arriving was that our departure was from the downstairs level. Downstairs we passengers walk across the tarmac to/from the aircraft and board/exit via stairs. On the way in we had a jet bridge connected to our aircraft. Ooh, luxury! 🙃 I gather the difference there was that we flew in on a not-bargain-basement airline. On the way out today we're on Vueling, which shares the space with RyanAir.

As befits an airline that lands its aircraft next to those from RyanAir— a European discount carrier notorious for nickel-and-diming passengers— everything about this flight other than getting from point A to point B costs extra. Selecting seats in advance cost money— which I'm glad Hawk wanted to pay for right after booking, because we were seated in 1A and 1C. Checking bags also cost money, as would have carrying aboard something larger than fits under the seat.

Even basic drinks cost money. You know those half-cups of soda we travelers often complain about on US airlines because they're just a half cup? Here they're a half cup and they cost $4. Oh, and there's a whole freakin' catalog of stuff you can buy from your seat. I don't know who wants to buy stupid shit at 2x-3x the normal price.

Fortunately we're not tempted by any of the food or drinks as we planned ahead to eat breakfast in our room at the hotel. This flight's just 90 minutes long. We're flying to Barcelona, where we'll have over 3 hours for a connection. We'll eat lunch there.

Italy Travelog #26
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 30 May 2025, 5pm

Yesterday afternoon it was relaxing to spend time at the resort's hot tubs—or almost hot tubs, as I noted yesterday, so we decided to do it again this afternoon after a relaxing morning at the beach today. As we figured out yesterady which were worth using and which were not— two of them have pumps are connected backwards, Buttoh!— we spent our time today mostly in this hot tub that looks like a cross between a pool and a maze for kids in the newspaper's puzzles page.



I think this pool is kind of is meant to be a maze. As you walk around the curve at the bottom of the photo, pairs of jets at different depths massage your calves, knees, thighs, and sides. I alternated between the deepest and shallowest jets, maneuvering around in front of them, to loosen my ankles and my back. My ankles are still sore from all that walking we did in Rome a few days ago!

After a good, long soak we're back at our room now, stretched out on the chaise lounges on our private patio. Dinner's not until 7pm, the earliest reservation available as that's when the restaurant opens, so we're pre-gaming with potato chips and beer here on the patio.



This photo's actually from yesterday with lunch at the pool, but it's the same beer. I mean, not the same bottle of beer 😂 but the same brand, Ichnusa. It's the local beer made in Sardinia. The one I bought yesterday at the pool-side cafe was, like, €10 or something ridiculous like that. At the beach-side cafe it was "only" €6. After coming back from the beach I bought a few bottles at the convenience store across the street for €2 apiece to enjoy here in our room. Other beers, all of which have to be imported by ship, are more expensive. Fortunately Ichnusa is a fairly standard European lager with a mild, but not too-mild flavor. It's good for drinking with made-for-Americans Italian food or enjoying by itself on a warm afternoon.

Italy Travelog #25
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 30 May 2025, 1pm

Today is a departure day for many of my colleagues attending President's Club. Some left early today to catch morning flights at CAG airport; others are hanging around until leaving late this afternoon for evening flights. If we'd left today we'd have part of the morning crew, having to catch a 6:15am shuttle to drive almost an hour to CAG airport to catch a 9:15 flight to BCN, one of the few logical connections for heading back to the US. Instead we extended our stay an extra day; on our dime. We figured once we're hailing our asses out here, 6,000 miles from home, it's worth staying more than 2½ days. And we're making today another take-it-easy-around-the-resort day.

After breakfast and a morning oopsie today we relaxed in our room a bit before heading out to the beach. Sadly this resort hotel is not actually on the beach. As I showed in my first blog upon settling in to the hotel you can barely even see the beach from the hotel. And the beach you can (barely) see isn't even the hotel's beach. The hotel's beach is 4km away.



We packed a canvas bag with sunscreen, a few bottles of water, and a USB charger, and caught one of the hotel's golf cart shuttles over to the beach. It drops us off in front of the hotel's beach-side cafe, The Dunes, shown above. We are lunch here with colleagues when we arrived on Tuesday.



Walking past the cafe we reach the entry to the beach. It's over the dunes from the shuttle stop/parking/cafe area.

Once over the dunes there's a pair of little huts that hand out towels and sell a small selection of drinks. We took our towels, picked a pair of lounge chairs below an umbrella, and kicked off our sandals to head out to the water.



We walked on the wet sand, the edges of teh surf lapping against our toes, to the far end of the beach and back. The water here, the Mediterranean Sea, was cold. It's a beautiful blue but it's cold.



After our walkabout we settled back in our beach chairs. The cold water just wasn't worth spending time in. We nested here for at least an hour, until 12:30, when we decided to get some lunch. We repacked our bag, turned in our towels, and walked back over the dunes to the The Dunes (the cafe) for our meal. After this we'll ride a golf cart back to the hotel, rest in our room a bit, then head up to the spa for another bout with the not-quite-Roman baths.

Italy Travelog #23
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 8pm

Eating dinner surprising takes a lot of planning in Italy. Especially as an American with American habits. Restaurants virtually all close after lunch and don't open again until dinner. And dinner is late. A few restaurants start at 7pm. Many don't reopen for dinner until 7:30. And you often need reservations. Especially for dinner, as most casual restaurants, the kind where reservations aren't required, don't even serve dinner. They close after lunch. So if you want dinner out, you've got to plan ahead and wait.

It's extra hard out here in Chia on the island of Sardinia where there aren't even that many restaurants. Other than the few onsite at the hotel, which are all expensive and have tiny menus— each has, like, one thing Hawk could eat— there's one other restaurant nearby. It's spendy and also has, like, one thing Hawk could eat. After that the next nearest place is a taxi ride away. Except there are no taxis here. And a private car costs €45. Each way. Even just to go a few miles.

We ended up buying a few things at the small grocery store a few minutes' walk from the resort and enjoying a picnic dinner on our patio. Oh, but we had to go quickly, because the grocery closes at 7pm.



The photo shows the two kinds of sliced meat I bought, sliced cheese, bread, and wine. The cheese is pecorino sardo, a local style of pecorino. The bread is focaccia. And the wine is Cannonau, a locally grown grape that is actually an ancient clone of Grenache/Garnacha. Most of it was pretty tasty. One of the two types of meat was overly dry.

On our way out to the store, when we were discussing the limited dining-out options with the hotel concierge, I remarked that waiting until 7:30 for restaurant seating was unusual to me because most Americans eat dinner earlier. She explained that Italians normally eat dinner as late as 9:30. To them, she explained, 7:30 dinner is early because people who work in stores only close up at 7. They have to go home and start dinner or go back out to eat.

It's an interesting explanation that points to a cultural difference. In the US we think of the service industry as there to serve us. In Italy it's more recognized that the service industry is "us"; that it's normal people working jobs in retail, and they need to live their lives, too.

Italy Travelog #21
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 2pm

We decided to enjoy a take-it-easy day at the resort today. That's a choice with consequence, though. What we've chosen to say No to is a catamaran and snorkeling trip! Alas, as much fun as being out on a boat on azure waters can be, and as much as I've wanted to snorkel since I was a boy, I've found out the hard way, by two failed attempts, that I'm not able to snorkel. Maybe I could with some careful instruction, maybe not. But I definitely can't with just, "Here's a mask and some fins, now jump in!" Plus, Hawk is reluctant even to try because swimming poses to much of a threat to her injured back. But hey, just because we're not going snorkeling doesn't mean we sit around our room swallowing our tears, there's a pool to enjoy!

Update, 6pm Thursday: The whole snorkeling trip was a fail. Due to high winds and problems with the boat, nobody got to snorkel. Now I'm so glad we stayed home and enjoyed the resort!



Ha ha, the joke was on us. That pool is cold. Like, seriously, the only people going in the water are the couple from Minnesota and the couple from Germany. All the rest of us dipped a toe in and said OH HELL NO! 😱

But again, there are more options here than go back to our rooms and swallow tears. There are comfy lounge chairs with beautiful views across the pool and to the ocean beyond.




Some lounge chairs, like the pair we got (photo above) are even in the shade and pair to form a day-bed for two.

Plus, a few minutes later we got drink service, so imagine that picture above with us in it plus a piña colada and a margarita. (Yes, we're drinking like we're in Latin America while being in Italy, but frankly all the Italian drinks on the menu look disgusting.)

We chillaxed on the pool deck for almost 2 hours, until we decided it was time for lunch. We placed an order at the little cafe over to the side. The host came to fetch us when our food was ready.



Apparently they don't serve food at the lounge chairs. I guess that makes sense because otherwise people'd generally make a mess of them. So we sat up straight and enjoyed our lunch at a little pool-side cafe table. Hawk ordered a bowl of spaghetti while I played the Ugly American card and ordered the hamburger. BTW these were two of literally only four entree choices on the menu, so it's like we skipped over all the cibo tipico to pick these dishes. Plus, we've recently been unimpressed with the island's cibo tipico.

After lunch we stretched out in our shaded day-bed for a bit longer before heading back down to our room. Hawk has now gone upstairs to the spa for a deep tissue massage— a mea culpa comped for yesterday's fuckup with cibo tipico. I'll join her up there after her massage for us to use the hot tubs together.

Italy Travelog #19
Santadi, Sardinia - Wednesday, 28 May 2025, 1pm

Our organized activity at Club today was a cave tour at the Is Zuddas Grotto in Sardinia. We could have opted for ruins and wine touring, mountain biking, or horseback riding instead but chose this because it was the most up our alley. As a serendipity we learned a lot about Sardinian history from our tour guide on the van ride over here, even though at the cave she handed us over to a cave specialist.



As we started into the cave I wondered if I'd chosen the wrong activity. I mean, limestone caves are basically all the same. And we've seen a lot of them. Maybe we should have done the ruins and wine tasting tour instead... though Hawk doesn't/can't drink, so that's why.



One interesting formation we saw is "Medusa". ...Okay, maybe that's more interesting linguistically than geologically because "medusa" is the name in Romance languages for jellyfish. It's like only we stupid anglophones have a different name for jellyfish that doesn't evoke the Greek myth of Medusa. And this formation does look more like a jellyfish than a demonic woman with snakes on her head.



Anyone who's visited a bunch of limestone caverns probably looks at the photo above and puzzles for a moment, "Wait, what's going on here?" That's because stalactites and stalagmites are virtually always oriented vertically, their shapes driven by gravity. Well, what happened here is that a block of stalactites fell from the ceiling. They're at an angle because that's how the block landed when it fell to the floor of the cave. And note it fell, like, millions of years ago, because of the size of stalagmites growing atop it.



Above I noted that stalactites and stalagmites virtually always form vertically. There's a category of stalactites that don't. They're called helictites, and they can grow in crazy shapes, thin tendrils extending sideways, curving around, forming curls and "S" bends, and even forking.

"What does Science know about why helictites form in such eccentric shapes?" I politely asked the guide, who'd been getting a bit frustrated about the parallel lesson in limestone formations I'd been whispering to a colleague who'd never been in a cave before.

Strangely I'd never though to ask this before. I mean, other cave guides have pointed out helictites, so I've known what they are, by definition, but not the science behind them. To his great credit, this guide had an education answer.

First, there are multiple theories, the guide explained. That's classic science right there. Science includes uncertainty, and true scientists acknowledge when/where it exists— an unfortunate fact that is frequently exploited by demagogues nowadays to dismiss science as wild theories that are merely personal opinion, all equally valid.

The leading theory, which our guide holds, is that helictites develop in eccentric formations because their rate of water flow is so slow that water evaporates quickly. Remember, all these cave formations are driven by the action of water responding to gravity. Rain water seeping through small cracks in the rocks above dissolves limestone. It flows downward along existing formations and forms droplets at the bottom. Rock re-crystalizes from these droplets. But with helictites it's thought that the water flow is so minimal that the water doesn't even form a droplet; it evaporates before it gets to that stage. Thus limestone deposits may form on the side of an existing limestone structure, or— via capillary action— at its upper tip.

Italy Travelog #17
Chia, Sardinia - Tuesday, 27 May 2025, 4:30pm

Our flight from Rome to Cagliari this morning was uneventful. And mercifully short, at 1h15m. That's because we were cramped into average-minus economy seats— not that Aeroitalia even has roomier seats, except in the exit rows— and there was no wifi. Sigh. Yet another budget European carrier. At least so far they've only joked about having to pay €5 to use the toilet.

BTW, if you're wondering how to pronounce "Cagliari", it is not Cag-lee-ARR-ee. That's kind of an Anglo pronunciation. In Italian the g is basically silent when paired with an l. Thus the locals all say CAL-yah-ray. It sounds a lot like they're saying Calgary— the city in Alberta, Canada. But fortunately the weather here is better. It's sunny and around 80° today.



It was a long ride in a van from the airport down to our hotel. We're not in Cagliari/Calgary but in the small town of Chia, on the southern tip of the island of Sardinia. Parts of the drive were through fairly rural areas. The roads in this spread-out resort hotel are mostly dirt roads.

Once on the property, we checked in and stowed our luggage. Our room wasn't ready yet. We rode in a golf cart over to a hotel restaurant near the beach. There we met several colleagues and joined them for lunch. And to put our food on my sales VP's tab. 😅 Not that the company isn't paying for it anyway; this is Club.



We drew out lunch waiting for a text from the front desk that our room would be ready. Actually pretty much all of my colleagues were waiting for the same. Around 4pm I gave up because I felt like I was about to fall asleep and rode a golf cart back to the front. Our room was ready; they just hadn't texted us. 😒

The room is large, reasonably comfortable, but also kind of bland. The one interesting feature it does have is a large, private patio (see above). We're on the first floor, though, which kind of means no view.



I lifted my camera up over my head to look over the bushes around our patio. Yeah, we can kinda see the ocean from here. But this is not what I think of when I think "beach resort". I feel like my company either got rooked on picking this location... or cheaped out. I'm already reconsidering my choice to stay an extra day here at my own expense. It's not worth the nightly rate for this. 😔