My Italian Vacation

When we had last left off I was in hour 10 of my stranding in Rome, Italy.

After 7 hours waiting on the plane and then another 5 hours waiting in the airport we got word that they would be taking us to a hotel. We were led outside to a bus and taken to the lovely "Satellite Palace Hotel", not to be confused with the Palace Hotel where the Economy class passengers were taken. We Business class passengers were taken to a different hotel where we were able to check-in without any trouble and take a shower after 33 hours of travel. I had taken the precaution of packing a change of underwear, a fresh shirt and my pajamas in my carry-on bag, but I had to take a short walk in the heavy Rome rain to a supermarket to buy deodorant, a hair brush and a disposable razor. (Note to self: Add these items to my packing list for future travel.)

After having a light meal at the hotel's restaurant I went back up to my room and lay down for an hour or so. I went down to the lobby to see if there was any word yet from the airlines and was told that the mechanics had the new part and the plan was to fly out at around 10:30 that night. At this point it was about 6pm and we'd been at the hotel for about 2 hours. I asked the front desk where we were in Rome and he told me we were about a half hour's subway ride from the city center, but with the rain and the uncertainty about our plans I didn't want to risk a trip that far away. Instead, at his suggestion I walked about a half mile to the ocean shore. The rain had passed and although it was brisk in my light sweater it was a refreshing walk. I got back to the hotel at 7pm to find that a bus would be picking us up at 8:30pm to take us back to the airport to fly out at 10:30pm.

We got to the airport before 9pm but we had no idea where to go. Ours was not a scheduled flight, so it did not show on the departures board and no one at the airport knew anything about it. There was no one from Ethiopian Air to direct us, so we wandered around the ticketing area for around 30 minutes before we were finally given a gate for our flight.

At 10:45pm the crew arrived at the airport and went out to the aircraft. 45 minutes later, without any announcements they started a cattle-call boarding process. We had been given a plastic transfer pass when we got off the plane earlier that morning. Now each person had to surrender their pass and show their passport so that they could check the names, one-by-one against a printout of the passenger manifest. What a disaster.

On reaching the plane we took out seats and readied to finally continue our journey, but the pilot announced that after restarting the engines cold he would need to run them for 15 minutes before we could depart. That time having expired he finally called for the tractor to push us back from our parking place on the runway. We finally started our takeoff roll at 1:00am, almost 24 hours after we had landed.

We reached Addis Ababa some 5 1/2 hours later, most all of which I slept through courtesy of chemical science. Of course our flight to Entebbe was delayed an hour and a half, but finally, at 2:30pm local time we landed in Uganda. An uneventful 1 hour ride to our hotel finally ended my trip from hell at 4:30pm on Wednesday, some 58 hours after I had left my house in Ventura on Sunday evening. Monday and Tuesday disappeared into the neverness of the travelsphere as if they had never existed for me.