Perhaps I'm too much of a cheap-skate. But it makes sense to me to try to use all the American Airline AAdvantage miles we' ve accrued to travel the World. But as many of you can attest, that's easier said than done in these days of full flights and diminished airline profits.
Thursday, March 15, 2012.
It all started with an unexpected call from The Registry Collection saying that we had cleared a waiting list, and we could stay for a week inTuscany, at a charming but remote villa, basically for free. (When we don't use our shared-ownership weeks at Northstar Club in Lake Tahoe, we "bank" them with The Registry Collection for tradable points.) The Relais Villa Petrischio looked marvelous online, and we would have a large two-bedroom, two-bath Villa apartment. The "VP" as we now call it, is just outside the city of Cortona, in a village called Farneta that is on only the most detailed maps of Italy.
Florence or any town in Tuscany is not an easy place to get to... so we quickly called American Airlines to see if we could use our miles some way, to travel to Italy and back in Business Class. Or at least use the miles to get to some gateway city in Europe, and then purchase cheap seats on a budget airline to get to Tuscany.
American found a route that took us from San Francisco to Dallas, with a nice two-hour connection to a nonstop flight to London. That would work, we thought. We could then fly to Florence from London inexpensively on a nice airline we discovered last year... CityJet, the next day.
San Francisco has many fabulous traits, but the design if its Airport is not one of them. If it rains, or it's windy, or if it's foggy, one of the two closely-laid out parallel runways gets closed. So arriving flights are often 30 to 90 minutes late getting to SFO. On Wednesday, March 14, 2012, that's exactly what was happening. But miraculously the aircraft to be used for our flight to Dallas was only a few minutes late arriving at SFO. Flight 1040 was about the only one on the monitor with an "On Time" designation. We were pleased as punch, as we waited in the American Airlines Admiral's Club Lounge. (We're not members, but when you travel Business Class on International flights, you get to visit these friendly confines for road warriors.) With two hours between our flights in Dallas, we figured we were in great shape.
So we finally board our flight in the early "Priority AAccess" group, and the pilot announces that they noticed a problem with the nose landing gear. Something about needing nitrogen. Maintenance people were called and the rest of the passengers were held up from boarding the aircraft and had to wait inside the airport. The countdown clock started ticking... 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes... Finally the pilot said the problem was fixed and we were good to go. But there were still at least 150 people that had to board our 767. 30 more minutes go by and we finally take off.
Our two-hour connection window in Dallas was now zero. But usually they can make up some time on the flights, so Ronna and I stayed hopeful. The computer clock screen said we would arrive in Dallas at 8:09 pm, and our flight to London left at 8:30... Might we make it?
The flight attendants were sympathetic to our plight, and came by to say we would be arriving at Gate D26, very close to Gate D30, from which our flight to London would be leaving. But they also mentioned we were the only passengers going on to London. Could we do it?
Unfortunately it was about 8:25 when we actually landed and arrived at our gate... And it was NOT D26, it was C8...making it virtually impossible for us to make it to our flight to London. We tried running, but we were flagged down halfway to the C Terminal and told to stop --our flight had left without us.
We were handed new tickets for a flight to London a day later, along with vouchers for some meals and a one-night stay at the fabulous Wingate Hotel at DFW. (LOL) We would now be flying to Chicago, then changing planes for a 7:30 pm flight to London, a day later than planned. We asked about our luggage, and a manager called down to the Baggage Department and swore they would be properly re-routed to London via Chicago. "That's what we do... That's our mission," he proclaimed. We'll see about that, we thought... Especially after our son Andy went almost a week without his suitcase on a trip to Italy last month! But he was on striking Air France, not bankrupt American.
We tried to make the best of it and without luggage so we went down to catch a shuttle bus to the Wingate. At the curb were at least 20 people waiting to also go to this marvelous establishment. We got to ride crammed & standing with loud rap music, kind of like a ride to hell!
I commiserated with another passenger who also missed his connection, and we agreed that if we hadn't had to wait for the coach passengers to board after the mechanical problem was solved, we would NOT have all missed our flights. But that's the way American does things in this era of "passenger bill of rights." They are so gun shy of holding passengers "hostage" on board planes, that they have now over-compensated and err on the side of not boarding passengers at all if there "might" be a delay. A true case of "unintended consequences" with a well-intentioned new law. And this bit of new consumer legislation cost us at least a day of our vacation.
The Wingate was passable, and we used one of our meal vouchers for a delicious midnight dinner at the next-door Denny's restaurant. We should have been enjoying some pub food in London about now, but the Denny's illuminated with what seemed like 500-watt bulbs, would have to do for now.
The Wingate gave us disposable tooth brushes, and funny deodorant wipes. Ronna said it was just like camping! We went to our room to figure out how to get to Tuscany, since our original plan was to spend a night in London and take a 9:15 am flight to Florence on Friday, March 16. But that CityJet flight only goes at 9:15 Monday thru Friday, so it was off the table.. As was our non-refundable hotel payment for our hotel in London, and our hotel in Florence!
Ronna smartly remembered that there is an airport in Pisa, Italy. So I went online and found a flight from Heathrow to Pisa that left two hours after our American 777 landed in London. I booked the British Airways
Flight, and then changed our rental car arrangements to Pisa, and then emailed the Villa in Cortona to see if they could recommend a place for a one-night stay nearby. (We weren't scheduled to check in to the Relais Villa Petrischio until Saturday.)
Elga, the concierge at the VP, emailed back that they would be happy to let us arrive a day early, and pay just €150 extra. What a deal. So we now had a completely revised itinerary that still depended on making several airline connections.
The only good part of this delay was that Ronna got to have breakfast with her brother Tony, who lives quite close to DFW. He even chauffeured us from the Wingate to the terminal for our flight to Chicago.
We made it fine to ORD, and had three hours to kill before our flight to London.
So we stopped in for our third visit to an Admiral's Club Lounge... This one even bigger than SFO or DFW. (Their complimentary well Vodka and Gin was quite drinkable!)
Finally, we were on our way to Heathrow aboard a nice wide-bodied Boeing 777. In Business Class. Using miles.
Friday, March 16, 2012. Ready For Some Good Old Jet Lag.
The flight to London was only about 6.5 hours from Chicago, and we were a bit late but had just enough time to get to our British Airways flight to Pisa. Ronna and I had fairly low expectations of our luggage making it to London. In fact Ronna had in the back of her mind some serious clothes shopping! Low and behold our bags were there at Heathrow! We carted them off and found an Underground tube train to take us from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 for our flight to Pisa.
Landed uneventfully in Pisa (didn't see the Leaning Tower), rented a car and started the two-hour drive to the Villa.
As I've said before, it takes at least two people to drive on Italian roads. One to point the car and switch gears with the manual transmissions they mostly have, and a second soul to read the maps and watch for the dozens of blue and green directional signs that pop up at the roundabouts like so many wild weeds. Ronna gets the driving assignment and I get to be the "Nag-avator" when we are in Europe.
Italian drivers drive fast; they don't stay in their lanes; and they pass you on blind curves as if there could never possibly be anyone coming in the opposite direction! We jumped on an "Autostrade" as soon as we saw their green signs and zipped over to the famous A-1 motorway fora fast two-hour trip down to the Cortona area. Stressful driving while jet-lagged!
We had a bit of trouble finding the one-building village of Farneta, but pulled into the charming Villa Petrischio at about 6 pm on Friday... a full 42 hours after we left our home in San Francisco.
Elga showed us to our apartment... half of a one-story stone duplex on a nice hill surrounded by other buildings. We were told we were the only guests at VP and there would be no staff on the premises until Monday! More "camping" we remarked.
The Villa apt was nicely furnished and had been totally remodeled while maintaining the old wood beamed ceilings and other architectural features. It had an excellent kitchen with modern appliances, but no microwave. One bath had a whirlpool tub, the other a real shower. The bedrooms were nicely appointed (one king & one tiny twins) but had very firm mattresses typical of Euro beds.
We were given instructions on how to log on to the WiFi Internet, and recommendations for restaurants and grocery stores nearby.
After Elga left for the weekend, we discovered there was no WiFi signal at all! We called her cell phone and were told the "technician" would not be around until Monday. Oh no! No interconnectivity for more than two whole days! What were we to do!
We fought our "connection addiction" by reading, watching DVD movies, drinking lots of wine, and going shopping for fine Italian food to prepare in the apartment's nice kitchen.
I had envisioned going to a series of tiny quaint shops to buy vegetables, meats, cheeses, and so forth. Instead we followed Elga on her way home and she showed us to the COOP supermarket in nearby Foiano. It was like a Safeway but with really good fresh stuff in it!
We bought butter lettuce the size of a basketball, fresh-made pasta, the reddest Roma tomatoes we'd ever seen, huge purple-tinged scallions, lots of excellent local wine, phenomenal fresh breads, amazingly-inexpensive Balsamic vinegar, and much more! We headed back to VP to prepare dinner and enjoy our Villa apartment.
With no sunlight, the grounds of the VP took on a somewhat ethereal glow. As we walked from our rental car to our apartment along a dimly-lit gravel path, the film "The Shining" came to mind. I kept expecting Jack Nicholson to jump out from behind a wall saying "Here's Johnny!"
Very little ambient light meant a spectacular sky filled with stars, and no sounds of any kind, except for the occasional rustling of leaves as small Italian lizards of some kind would scurry to find prey.
Wine and our pasta dinner got good reviews from Ronna, and we retired for the night around midnight.
It's Always Farther Than You Think.
Saturday, March 17, 2012. On a prior trip to Italy for our thirtieth anniversary, we meant to pay a visit to a medieval walled town called Montalcino, the home of the spectacular Brunello wines. So we plotted out the trip on our maps, and left around 1 pm for this central Tuscany destination.
Although the signs say a place may be only, say 40 km, which is about 30 miles... It takes a lot longer because of the windy two-lane roads you need to negotiate. In addition, there is never enough parking around these medieval villages, so you drive a lot to find a parking spot, or you park on the bottom of the hill and climb lots of stairs to the village. We did both in Montalcino. First parking in a location too far away from the main plaza, then driving further up for a closer spot.
We wandered around Montalcino, finally ending up at Caffe Fiaschetteria Italiana where we not only enjoyed some great Brunello wine, but also got online to tell the world we finally made it to Italy. We also learned that Brunello wine is a fairly recent creation. A dude named Ferruccio Biondi Santi, invented Brunello wine after all the other varieties of grapes in the region had died off. This was in 1888. Turned out to be a better blend than anything that had been made there in the past.
When we arrived at the Caffe, we noticed a band was setting up outside. They turned out to be a Celtic group doing Irish folk tunes. After all, it was St. Patrick's Day in Italy!
After a dark, rather treacherous drive (& in need of gas) we stopped at another grocery, Penny Market in Foiano, and picked up some hearty-looking chicken thigh sections and some potatoes. We enjoyed our Villa, watching Russell Crowe learn to appreciate a French vineyard he inherited "A Good Year" on DVD while our chicken roasted in the oven. Another nice meal, built on the wonderful local meats and produce of Italy. It was about 1 am by the time we hit the hay.
Sunday, March 18, 2012. Since all the grocery stores in the area close at 1 pm on Sundays, we decided this was a good day to have a Tuscan dinner in a restaurant. So we relaxed in our apartment for most of the afternoon waiting out the rain jet-lag, then headed to Cortona for exploration and dinner. Again, parking was problematic, and we ended up on the side of a road fairly close to the main drag of Cortona, but only marginally legal. We figured we'd plead "tourist ignorance" if our car was towed, but on a Sunday in Italy... towing was not likely we surmised.
We spent quite a bit of time in Cortona last May, so things were familiar, including the paper shops, wine stores, cafes, and restaurants. As we wandered the Village, we heard loud music coming from the main Plaza Republicca. Turns out they were having some sort of singing competition, with a series of loud, young Italian female singers belting out songs over a big loudspeaker system. We also found a good WiFi signal at a pleasant cafe, and checked email and learned that daughter Natalie and her wife, Jessie, had made it to Barcelona (belated honeymoon) and they were looking forward to a nap!
As we walked some more, we noticed that the singing show was winding down, and dozens of people were holding paper mini hot-air balloons for a simultaneous release into the sky. These neat little disposable air ships were about three feet in diameter, and the audience members would light some strange flammable material underneath to heat the air and make the balloon rise.
The final release of the balloons was quite spectacular as the crowd cheered and the orbs floated up amid the medieval buildings and dusky skies of Tuscany.
We perused half a dozen restaurants to find something unique for dinner, and settled on a place recommended by VP, Ristorante La Loggetta. We splurged on the big traditional Fiorentina T-bone steak dinner for two, along with a bottle of excellent Montepulciano wine.
The walk back down to our car was easier than the trip up, and we were pleased that our car was still where we parked it. We carefully drove the now-familiar route from Cortona back to our apartment at VP, and slow danced together with the starry skies of Tuscany out our windows to music from our iPod before retiring at midnight.
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