Getting Here

After one 24-hour in Wilmington and then one 3-hour delay in Philly, our flight to Rome finally boarded. Apparently the 2nd delay was because something malodorous and seeping on the plane, so the aircraft change was probably worth the wait. The movies system was on the blink, and in-flight entertainment was largely provided by an elderly gritty Italian man who seemd on the brink of insanity and looked to have been pulled straight off a small village's fishing dock and plopped onto the international flight scene. He started an argument with the flight crew right off, because he thought it total bullshit that the first-class passengers were receiving water while the 200 or so of us in coach had to wait. It didn't help when the flight attendant argued that he couldn't have water now, as we were about to take off and the water was all the way in the back of the plane, and then decided to give him some after all from front of the plane. There was a solid amount of egging on by several other of the passengers and our fisherman decided to keep barreling into first class, right through that little mesh curtain meant separate coach from first class. It was business as usual for the flight crew who could be heard from our fantastic bulkhead seats saying things like, "I got a myself real crazy back there."

I didn't get to sleep at all, at all, at all on the plane but did get the movies system to work for me and watched two feature length movies RIGHT IN A ROW. Baby started a throw-up bug in-flight and Ezra slept in on the floor by our feet between coughing fits. It seemed both sad and funny that we were the only people on the plane with young children. For as much as we've heard about how much Italians like children, I think they like them more when they don't have to take long, long red-eye flights with them. However, despite the health challenges, the kids were quite well-behaved and easy passengers, made to look even better by the wiley old guy with the water issue.