Leaving Rome, Nov. 19th: 3 hours on the tarmac

All good things must come to an end and so we had to leave Rome.  Vibe left on Tuesday and now it is our turn.  The building across from the apartment has undergone quite a change: it now has a new coat of beige plaster, despite all the rainy days and the weekend when they didn't work.  Will they eventually paint it yellow with brown trim to match the side of the building?  They painted the eaves beige.  Is that an undercoat?  Will we ever know?  I suppose we could ask Andrea to send us a photo when they are finished.

We also had our last bottle of wine last night: a frascati rather than a novello which was our specialty this trip because it comes out in November.  The frascati went fine with all the leftovers that we hadn't manage to eat while Vibe was here (she took us out to dinner several times).    I also never managed to get to EATALY or to anything else in Testaccio.  That will have to wait for the next trip!

Air, water and soap for each sink.

Andrea called a cab for us at 8 in the morning and it took about 45 minutes to get to the airport, which left us plenty of time before our flight, which was scheduled for 11:35 am.  The American and Israeli airlines are off in a terminal by themselves so we left Penny (who was taking Lufthansa) at Terminal 3 and we took a shuttle out to Terminal 5 (I'm not sure what happened to Terminal 4).  That meant that our shopping options were limited and they had no bancarelle at all!  But the bathrooms had nice sinks where the soap, water and dryer were all together for each sink.  They even had a low sink for children!  Of course two of the five sinks were out of order...

Unlike the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Rome's airport is small and so we weren't waiting in interminable lines for 3 hours.  Instead we were waiting on the tarmac for 3 hours because the fuel wasn't loaded on the plane right and it took them that long to fix it.  Like our flight to Rome, our flight to Philadelphia was 3 hours late and we left at 2:30pm instead of 11:35am.   Also as on our trip to Rome, we were sitting over the wing and couldn't see much, although we did get a peak at the alps before we got up so high that we only saw clouds.

We landed in Philadelphia at 6:41 pm (instead of 3:45) so I had missed my 5:29pm flight to Pittsburgh but US Airways had rescheduled all the connecting  passengers and had a table full of new boarding passes waiting when we disembarked.  That was just as well since now I was on Fernando's 8:29pm flight to Pittsburgh, and it was just as well that his flight was running late (now 9:10, eventually 9:25) since it took us a whole hour to get through immigration and customs and again through security.  After which we treated ourselves to a Wendy's hamburger (and Penny was having dinner with Laina already at the Fair Lawn diner!).

We eventually reached Pittsburgh (30 degrees), got our car and drove home, arriving just after midnight.  But not without one final mishap.  They didn't load Fernando's suitcase on our Pittsburgh flight.  It had my luggage tag for the 5:29 flight and we had asked the guy in Philadelphia if the tag shouldn't be changed.  "No, don't worry.  It will get there."  Well, it didn't get there on our flight but was put on the 10 pm flight.  So now they are supposed to send it by delivery this morning.  We will let you know if it doesn't arrive!!

Best Place to Meet at Charles De Gaulle (CDG)

I did a Google search on this and came up with lots of people with the same question. On TripAdvisor, KCNAT from Kansas City (he must be a Pittsburgh transplant) recommended the EASY CDG website for help. Easy CDG has pdf maps of the various terminals, including an overview map and one of Terminal 2E - where Fernando and I are supposed to come in at one of the gates from E28-E47. Penny, it looks like you could take the CDGVAl (CDGVAL, métro automatique gratuit, fonctionne 24h/24 et 7j/7 entre les terminaux) from terminal 1 to the Gare TGV, which looks like it is right next to Terminal 2E. So should we meet you at the CDGVAL station next to the Paris by Train? Rick Steves says the RER and TGV stations are below the Sheraton Hotel, but he also recommends taking the bus... Did we ever buy Rick Steves Guide?