Steve Martin as Neil Page, Planes Trains and Automobiles
AUGUST 23-CEFALU & PALERMO, SICILY
My alarm went off at 4:45 AM, and I thought maybe of taking a quick dip in the pool before showering and getting dressed. I didn't, and looking back, I should have. It would have been the highlight of the day.
Salvatore was about 20 minutes late picking us up for our ride to the airport, which gave the four of us plenty of time to listen to the roosters and coyotes throughout the Cefalu countryside. When he finally got there and we got our bags in the car, he started making up for lost time.
The way I was sitting in the car, I was facing the rear window. That, the early time, and the fact that Salvatore was doing at least 90 MPH on the highway, made me feel like I was going to toss my pasta. Luckily I had some gum left over from the flight here, so that settled me down, but barely. You want to know why Italy turns out so many prolific race car drivers? Because they have to drive on narrow roads like the ones in Cefalu, then they go nuts on the highways. *
We took Lufthansa over, we were taking Swiss Air home.
We went to check in, and it was the complete opposite of when we checked in at JFK. There was a long a$$ line that wasn't moving. The guy sitting behind the desk just looked at his computer the whole time. After about 20 minutes of this, I went up to see what was going on, but a British guy beat me to it, "Pardon me, but we've been standing here for the better part of a half hour, can you tell us what the delay is?" A woman came over and said the computers were down.
This would have sucked anyway, but what made it worse was that we had to catch a connecting flight in Zurich. We didn't have a ton of time to get the connection either, less than an hour, and if the airport in Zurich was anything like the one in Frankfurt, we'd have to make like Usain Bolt to make it.
Finally after an hour, we were able to check in, and the numb-nuts behind the counter said "You will not have to collect your bags in Zurich, they will go directly to London." I said, No not London, New York! Got it?" He said he did.
He didn't. More on that later.
They delayed the flight so we had a few minutes to grab a bite. That was a mistake. There was one place in our terminal serving food, and not anything decent either. But part of me was happy, I had finally discovered an airport in the world that was a bigger $h-thole than LaGuardia.
The best thing I can say about the flight to Zurich was that we got a nice piece of Swiss Chocolate on it.
AUGUST 23-ZURICH
I was hoping as we landed in Zurich that I would see the famous Swiss Alps, but no dice. It looked like any other area around an airport. Once we got into the airport, we had to go to customer service to see how they were going to get us home, as our connecting flight was long gone. They told us to go to Gate 13. Immediately.
To get to Gate 13, we needed to take an escalator, and elevator, a train (yes a train) another elevator, and another escalator to Gate 13.
BTW- Zurich Airport, as you might imagine was gorgeous. It looked like the fanciest shopping mall you could ever be in. The place was immaculate. It was an airport I wouldn't mind if we were stranded for a few hours.
But we didn't have that option.
They were putting us on a Delta flight to JFK. There were three or four clerks at the gate desk. One of the clerks said our bags weren't coming on this flight. ( I knew it! That f-cking putz in Palermo sent our luggage to London) We asked how come?
You are late. A woman behind the desk said with a scowl.
It's not our fault we said, and one of the men there said he understood. Then he told us that we weren't getting four seats together like we had paid for. Why not?
You are late. The woman behind the desk said with a scowl.
OK, if she tells me we are late one more time, her and I are going to fight. But I had a bigger issue on my hands, a couple of security guards were taking Joan behind a curtain for questioning.
That's when I lost it.
"OK someone here needs to tell me what the hell is going on." I demanded. Why is my mother in law being questioned?
The nice guy behind the counter told me that she was chosen at random, as per the TSA, to be interviewed. It could have been anyone of us and was quite routine.
Nothing was routine about this.
We finally were allowed to get on the plane and as we were making our way to the seats, we heard the pilot announce in English
"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, we are picking up some passengers from Palermo, and as soon as we get them situated, we will begin preparing for takeoff."
At least I think that's what he said. This is what I heard.
"Ladies and gentlemen, you see these four a$$holes making their way to the back of the plane? Well they are the reason we are sitting here in Zurich. You can refer to them as the Palermo Four. Don't worry we told them three times at the gate they were late, and if it makes you feel any better, we had their luggage sent to London, so they'll have to turn their underwear inside-out when they get to New York."
The plane, needless to say, was packed. There were two seats together, so Timmy and I took those, they were the very last row of the plane on the pilot's side. Tara was a couple of rows ahead of us in the middle section, and poor Joan was closer to the front, co-pilot's side, with a bunch of kids throwing $hit at each other.
As the plane was finally taking off a little after 2 PM Zurich time, I set my watch for New York time. It was a little after 8 AM, right around the time I get to work on a Thursday. We were due to land at 4 PM, around the time I get ready to go home for the day. More to the point, I felt like I was adding 6 hours to a day that already felt like it had been going on forever.
There were some good things though...
The lady sitting next to Joan was from Franklin Square, and was very nice.
All of the flight attendants were really nice, but one gentleman was above and beyond. He gave Timmy all the ice cream and soda he wanted, and when the flight was over, told me Timmy was by far the best behaved kid on the flight. Which of course he was, but it was nice to hear.
The food on the flight was very good, at least I thought it was. And they kept it coming too.
The entertainment was solid, if not spectacular, but they had USB ports for phone charging, which was cool. I watched Patton with George C Scott, which was good if for nothing else the three hour plus flick ate up almost half the eight hour flight. I can't believe people actually sat in a movie theater in 1970 and watched that whole thing though. I'll spare you a review of a 48 year old movie, only to say that Karl Malden as Omar Bradley was fantastic (Malden will always be the American Express Travelers Checks man for me-Don't Leave Home without them). Also one of the major points in the movie was Patton planning an invasion of Palermo. I thought to myself I wished he'd invade Palermo again-or at least their dilapidated airport.
I read a really solid book after the movie called Greed and Glory: How Doc Gooden, Donald Trump, Lawrence Taylor, George Steinbrenner, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and the Mafia Ruled New York in the 1980's.** Which killed a couple more hours. Then I enjoyed watching as we flew down the East Coast from Canada right into JFK.
AUGUST 23-NEW YORK CITY
We landed in NY about 4:30 or so, but we had to go put a claim in for our bags, which was a whole other adventure. First after having Joan questioned in Zurich, they flagged Timmy's passport at JFK. We had to go through a special window to get him cleared. Then we had to find the section of the airport to put the claim in, which took another 10-15 minutes. Then after waiting in line for 10 minutes, the lady at the counter said our bags weren't even in the computer. She knew they existed, but couldn't tell us where they were. My money was on London, but it could have been Zurich or they may have stayed in Italy for all we knew. The bottom line was our luggage got to spend a few extra days in Europe. I guess that beats the other way around.
And look, I realize that airlines feel they have the obligation to get you to your destination as close to the time you asked for as possible, but if they had offered us better seats on a later flight with our luggage travelling with us, we would have taken it. As I said, Zurich Airport was really nice, and we weren't in a huge rush to get home. Tara and I were flying to Hilton Head once, and the airline offered a deal, because they had overbooked the flight, they said if anyone was willing to wait and take the following flight, they'd either upgraded to first class, or given a $100 voucher. We were anxious to get to Hilton Head, so we passed, but we would have jumped at an offer like that here. Or if they offered to put us up in one of those fancy Swiss hotels and put us on a next day flight. I could have done with a day in Zurich.
But they didn't. They made us feel guilty for being late, as if we were the ones flying the damn plane, then squeezed us into an overbooked plane, separated from each other (we paid for seats together) and the real kicker, without our luggage!
We tried to get a Uber home from JFK, but none were available. Luckily All-Island taxi had just dropped somebody off and was heading back to Lynbrook, so they took us to Oceanside. It's strange when you come home after an international trip, everything feels weird, even the familiar. Part of it is the jet lag, I'm sure. I had gotten up at 4:45 AM in Cefalu which was 10:45 PM in NY. Now it was 7:00 PM in NY, which was 1 AM in Cefalu. About 20 straight hours on the move. On the way over, you're just so excited to get there you don't care. On the way home its different. Add to that all the crap we went through and it was just exhausting.
*******************EPILOGUE*************
AUGUST 28-OCEANSIDE, NY
My cell phone rang about 9:15 PM. The guy on the other line said he was about 5 minutes away from my mother in law's house. He was coming from Newark Airport and he had the last two pieces of luggage we were missing. (Our other bag had arrived earlier that day) We had been home for 5 full days and only now did our luggage finally make it home. I drove over to her house and there was a van pulling in, filled to the gills with luggage. The two guys were trying to match it up with their manifest, but of course I recognized the bag immediately. After convincing them they were mine, they let me have them. We never got a full explanation of how they got separated or where in the world they ended up. But thankfully we had everything now.
Our vacation was officially over.
Folks, after everything that happened this summer, I really hope I don't come off as an spoiled obnoxious a$$hole bitching about a vacation that really was amazing. Don't get me wrong, Swiss Air screwed the proverbial pooch on this one, and my mother in law is determined to take this all the way to Brett Kavanaugh and the rest of the Supreme Court if that's what it takes to get some satisfaction. But I have to admit, I was laughing at myself while I was writing some of this, so I hope you did too.
Regular Weekly Mail returns tomorrow night...
*See also-Germany.
**I have a bunch of books I have to review with y'all. This will be the first one.
