Up and ready to go by 9:00, waited for our apartment host to call by and say our goodbyes, left at 9:35 for the airport. As we departed, Graeme was taking Tania's case, (because it was the heavy one !) and noticed it was hard to pull, on checking it appeared one wheel was a little off of centre.
Anyway 6 minutes walk to the Metro line 2, change over to Metro line 3 after 3 stops, bugger this wasn't the train that was continuing onto the airport, so we hopped out at the second to last stop and waited for the next train to the airport. All went smoothly and we arrived in plenty of time to check our bags, sit and have a coffee. Tania's bag - 21.9 kg, Graeme's bag 18.6 kg !
Airport staff through the security check in procedure were very rude and we lost three bottles of water and Tania almost lost her bottle of sanitiser !
Flight left about 50 mins late and we arrived in Rome at 15:30. Tania's bag was now completely missing a wheel and was quite heavy to drag along. We weren't too fussed as these bags have done us well for nearly 9 years. We were picking up a rental car, so it will not be a problem until we need to fly out in 32 days time !
All we had to do was pick up our pre-booked rental car at the Hertz counter ... take a number and after a 20 minute wait we eventually got to the counter. First problem, for some reason Tania wasn't noted as being the driver, although Graeme swears he would have documented this when booking the car ! This only meant an 11.99 Euro extra per day charge for the additional driver for 32 days - you do the maths ! Thankfully they agreed to waive the charge. Whew !
We always insist on getting an automatic car when we travel in Europe, but when we got to the parking lot and saw our alloted car, it was much bigger then we had arranged, it was a Lynx and Co SUV ... very nice car, but much bigger than we had been used to. Enquiring for a smaller car was fruitless. Firstly we had to work out how to adjust the seating etc. and then how to start the car.
Off we set along the one way exit lane. Got to the exit gate in the rental car park and gave the guy our car rental agreement paperwork. He looked at the car and started getting angry, shouting at us in Italian. We didn't know what the problem was ! Eventually, after much arm waving and gesturing, we worked out that the car we were driving had a registration plate that didn't match our rental agreement and he wasn't going to let us out ! Rightly so - but why get mad with us - we were given the wrong car !
We had to back up from the boom gate, and now with a car behind us we had a bigger issue...how do we put the car in reverse and pull over to the side ? With that sorted, the drive back to the office was all against the direction of traffic and around 2 corners.
Back to the rental desk to sort it out. With all our gear still in the car, they updated our agreement to reflect this car and we headed back to the guy at the exit gate. At this stage with the late plane, rental car wait and mess around, we were about 3 hours late leaving Rome to get to our accommodation, a 3 hour drive away.
The GPS was set and off we headed for Caserta at 17:00 ! Being a Friday of course it was now peak hour traffic so our journey to Caserta has become longer. We eventually arrived at 20:20, found our apartment (after being misled by Google Maps) and by 21:00 we were settled. Nice apartment, but needed sleep badly - it had been a very long day !
Ah – the joys of travel.
It is now behind you and will be a great dinner party story. Hand on, no-one has dinner parties any more. It will be a great darts gang get-together story.
As for the errant, and now gone, wheel on the luggage – look out for another piece of similar sized luggage in the hard rubbish – one that has functional wheels. Then get yourself a replacement piece at a market somewhere.
Good thinking !
What a kerfuffle. Glad it all got sorted out. I was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong as there hadn’t been any posts for a while.
Hope Tania had a nice birthday (and that she received my birthday message which I sent to her phone).
Enjoying the blog ❤️