When I was a senior in high school, two of my best friends and I decided to go to Italy for spring break instead of the general beach trip that most of the other kids in our year were taking.
One of my friend's older sister came with us as a chaperone (a 21-year-old chaperone). The four of us spent 3 days in Rome, took a train to Florence for another 3 days, another train to Venice for 3 more. At the end of our stay in Venice, the plan was to take a flight from Venice back to Rome for one more night and day, and then to fly back to the states. The flight was only going to be about 30 euros a piece, which seemed a pretty great deal.
We were staying in a hotel in a small town called Mestre, outside of Venice itself for cost reasons. 5:30 in the morning, we go to the bus stop that will take us to the airport. The bus, due at 6:00, was still conspicuously absent at 6:30. Our flight was scheduled for 9am, so, worried, we go back to our hotel and call a cab. The cab comes at 7:00 or so, but gets us to the airport at 7:30 without any problems. We're out 10 euros each or so, but not such a big deal. We drag our luggage inside the terminal, the cab drives away. We mill around for a little, looking around, and then stop to look at the departures/arrivals ticker.
One of my friends pipes up, "Why is the flight to Rome scheduled for 9:20?" Her sister looks at the tickets, looks around the terminal, then rushes to the information desk. She runs back to us screaming, "THE CAB BROUGHT US TO THE WRONG AIRPORT!!"
We run outside, hail the nearest cab. By this point it's 7:45. The cab driver hears what time our flight is, only exclaims, "OH!" we dump our stuff in the cab, and are suddenly speeding 120km/h along a misty, foggy, thankfully empty Italian highway with rock music blaring from the cab's speakers. 20 more euros from each of us, but we make it to the airport with maybe 15 minutes to go before departure.
But--I get selected for a random security screening. Me and my bag are taken into a private room and an official guy starts putting on rubber gloves. I worry for a minute, but all he does is dig through my bag a little, all is well, we're good to go. We check our bags, with 5 minutes to spare, and sit down the terminal (the entire airport is a single-room, dingy, darkish area where you wait in the terminal while watching bags being checked, etc). As we sit, a fuzzy voice comes in over the loudspeaker: The 9:00am flight to Rome has been canceled due to inclement weather (it was foggy at most, although looking back we were probably better off with the flight canceled).
We're put in a line, are told to find our bags in a giant pile of luggage, and are lined up to be handed photocopied instructions on how to get refunds for our tickets (by faxing in receipts etc. within 2 weeks of that date).
My group immediately latched onto a young couple from the states to figure out what to do about getting to Rome. We quickly hop into a shuttle to the Treviso train station, take a train into Venice, and get a train from Venice to Rome. What was going to be a 30 euro flight ended up costing each of us some 90 euros plus the lost ticket, and a good 10 hours we would never see again.
As we dragged our luggage through the Venice train station, a trail of brown liquid dribbled behind one of the young couple's bags. All they had to say was, "And there goes the booze."
Venice to Rome in 10 easy steps
- 15
- 9