Leaving midweek has the advantage of fewer travelers resulting in faster security check points!
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| Piazza Nettuno in City Center |
We left DC behind as the green line metro started and stopped to Greenbelt Station where the B30 bus shuttled us to BWI. Our planning had allowed an extra hour for the security check points at the airport but we breezed through in just 10 minutes. This gave us time for lunch at a fast food stop before boarding the plane to NYC.
The plane arrived at BWI on time, but weather conditions at NYC dictated a 1.5 hour departure delay from BWI. Just that quick, our well-planned time schedule was in jeopardy. We'd have 40 minutes in Kennedy Airport to get to the International Terminal and find our boarding gate for Madrid. No problem. Our plane's arrival gate was only two gates down from the Madrid flight gate, a pleasant change from years ago when the International Flights left from a seperate terminal on the far side of the airport. The overnight flight to Madrid included an entire symphony of area high school students with their instruments. Very excited, very lively, and very much awake all night! "No sleep for you!"
Madrid has a modern, spacious, and clean airport with lots of easy to follow directional signs. (This is very important when you have loss of sleep and jet lag.) We rode a subway about 3/4 of a mile from one end of the airport to the other, up and down elevators, through passport control, and then through a "Homeland Security" style check point to get to our next departure terminal. We spent our first Euros getting coffee and made the flight to Bologna without a problem.
We were suprised at Bologna to find we could just walk off the plane and out of the airport, no passport check. We followed a crowd of passengers to the Aeroporto Bus stop, paid our 6 euros each, and rode to Stazione Centrale in downtown Bologna! We made it! Well almost. We had to take one more bus, a local bus to the Bitone neighborhood where our home stay is located. It was at this point in the journey when we had done about 20 hours of traveling and had been awake for 30 hours, that we encountered our first SNAFU. The bus we wanted to catch, 27B, was approaching the bus stop at the same time as we were walking to the bus stop. A crowd of people was rushing to get seats on the bus and Marge and I got seperated.
Gary -"I couldn't see Marge anywhere and thought she had boarded via one of the 4 doors to the bus. My frantic calls to her outside the bus went ununswered. So I stepped onto the bus and again called her name. The door closed and the bus started off with me on it. A fist closed around my heart as I realized that Marge was not on the bus!"
Marge -"I knew Gary was on that very long bus, but the doors were shut tight and I did not feel confident to pound on the doors and shout, APERTO! Minutes later, another 27 bus stopped. I boarded and asked 'Bitone?' the name of our home stay stop. A kind, young woman, who is a university student, got off with me at Bitone and walked me to the appropriate address. I pushed the buzzer, announced myself to our host, and inguired after Gary. My poor, anxious morito/husband had just arrived and was very relieved and penitent. But it was circumstance and a lack of communication that caused the problem, not him."
Happy to be reunited with no recriminations, we set off to find our first drink in Bologna at the American Bar!
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| Our neighborhood bar - the American Bar |
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