Overnight at FCO (Rome Fiumicino Airport)

Our train from Florence arrived late at Rome Termini, but we walked over to the Leonardo Express platform knowing that they run regularly.

As we reached Binario 24, a train was indeed pulling in and we boarded promptly to make sure we’d have seats this time. That wasn’t necessary around 5:00pm on this particular day.

We arrived at FCO 32 minutes later and found our way to the walkway tube that leads to the Rome Hilton. This proved to be the best of our three or four stays at this property.

First, they recognized Kathy’s lifetime Hilton Diamond status and upgraded us to a junior suite. Let’s recall the room in which we spent four  nights at the Marriott Grand Universe in Lucca.

Imagine how our Hilton room felt in comparison.

A walk-in closet…

A big bathtub…

Welcoming treats…

Didn’t we feel special! We never had to ask DYKWIA (not that we ever would).

We made a quick visit to the Executive Lounge, temporarily housed in a room at the back of the restaurant, and discovered decent appetizers and good gin and tonics delivered to us.

We decided we “needed” one final Italian dinner, and the reasonably priced hotel restaurant exceeded our expectations, with lasagne for Brian and pizza for Kathy.

We slept well (our first good night’s sleep just as we’re about to return home) and enjoyed omelets and Cappuccinos in the restaurant this morning.

We checked and walked back through the tube to Terminal 3.

Fast Track security and automated passport control were uncrowded and efficient. Almost before we knew it, we’d been admitted to the deserted British Airways Lounge up an escalator on the second floor, where we were welcomed with our third Cappuccino of the day.

We learned that we.greatly prefer the FCO Hilton to the Hilton Garden Inn, despite generally better reviews for the HGI.

We were reminded that timing can be everything, and that uncrowded trains and hotels make for more enjoyable travel.

Finally, the email notice that BA sent us during the night keeps us from feeling too complacent.

Dear MR WARNER
Please be advised that your flight may be delayed today because of Air Traffic Control restrictions, caused by Storm Eowyn which is forecasted to bring strong winds across the London area.To prepare for travel, we recommend checking-in for your flight online at ba.com or via the British Airways app.  Check-in times at the airport will be limited to 2 hours before departure for short-haul flights, so please don't arrive before then.

Fortunately, our itinerary includes an overnight stay at the Heathrow Terminal 4 Hilton. Sky News reported the storm is reaching Scotland. 

We’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

PS… a travel update. The UK obviously experienced problems rolling out its new European Travel Authorisation scheme. You may be exempt if you’re transiting. The Home Office has seemingly decided to raise the fee, so check first if you’re traveling to or through the UK.

Mangiare! Dining Our Way through Lucca

A four-night stay in Lucca, Italy at this time of year gave us plenty of time to wander around this charming walled city.

We exited our regional train from Pisa and decided to walk the 10 minutes to our hotel, the Marriott Grand Universe.

It looks great, but we ended up in the smallest hotel room we’ve ever experienced.

We would have preferred a double bed and a little more space than this king bed provided. We worked hard not to knock the TV set off the wall as we inched by. The view of Piazza Napoleone from our window, although pleasing, wasn’t worth the walk.

The comedian who said his hotel room was so small that he had to go outside to change his mind was thinking of a room like this.

Nicely furnished, nightly turn-down service, rooftop Champagne bar (we didn’t indulge), but no place to sit.

We managed to pick up tickets for the concert we were attending, and found a little restaurant nearby, Pan di Strada,for a quick and tasty meal outside next to a propane heater.

The marvelous one-hour concert of favorite opera arias featured two sopranos. The acoustics in this small chapel were just about perfect.

Lucca is the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini, but we didn’t make it inside his childhood home, now a museum, due to its quirky opening hours.

We had to settle for admiring his statue in the nearby piazza.

It was raining when we arrived, and raining when we left, but we seldom needed our travel umbrellas during our stay. 

We did enough walking each day to almost deserve our meals, returning for Sunday lunch to a previous favorite, L’isola Che Non C’era, The Island that Wasn’t There, Neverland in the Italian version of Peter Pan. 

Is that whimsical or what? The food was excellent.

We dined out once or twice a day and experienced nothing less than a good meal, always with friendly service. Our most expensive meal was close to a hundred Euros, and our cheapest was twenty-five,

Yelp and TripAdvisor show a lot of 4.5-star and up eateries, and the standards seemed pleasingly high to us.

Stella Polare…

Pizzeria Pellegrini, our 25-Euro dinner that we couldn’t finish…

Our final dinner was at a cute little wine bar, featuring a house-made bean (and much more) soup, and a shared charcuterie board.

http://www.enotecavanni.it/

We chose to have the hotel’s continental breakfast this morning. These starches, some yogurt, and Cappuccinos set us back €15 each, but we’re riding trains much of the toward the Rome Airport so it was worth breaking our no-breakfast routines.

We managed just fine on a regional train from Lucca to Florence.

Our high speed train to Rome Termini was 20 minutes late, but we’re now hitting 230kph / 140mph in luxury.

From Termini it’s back on the Leonardo Express to FCO and the Rome Airport Hilton before tomorrow’s flight to London.

A Quick Visit to Rome

Our SEA-LHR flight on BA was pleasant and in between dinner and breakfast we managed a few hours of sleep.

We landed at LHR Terminal 5 and both read that our ongoing BA flight to Rome departed from Terminal 3. We learned there that it actually left from Terminal 5, so we took another 10-minute bus ride back there. At least we both made the same mistake.

Our BA business class tickets afforded us access to the Fast Track security lane, an oxymoron on this particular day. Brian’s rollaboard was pulled aside for extra screening just behind five other bags.

About 15 minutes later one of the employees got to it and wanted to check Brian’s toiletry bag. It might have been his stick deodorant. We learned at a German checkpoint last year that solid deodorants don’t count as solid. “A book is solid,” an employee kindly explained.

It could have been worse.Our research subsequently revealed people complaining about one-hour delays at Fast Track. 

We sipped a little Champagne and ate a light dinner at the buffet in BA’s first class lounge, before boarding our flight to Rome.

We had fairly short notice of the gate (fairly common in Europe), and had to walk a distance before riding another train to the B gates.

Boarding had already started, and we were fortunate to find space in the overheads for our rollaboards. Finding space for our knees on the A320 was equally challenging.

We were happy to skip dinner and to land on time at FCO. We caught the free (!) airport bus to the Hilton Garden Inn, where we spent a warm and occasionally noisy night in a typically small room. 

Its redeeming feature was was a very comfortable bathtub that allowed Kathy to soak her sore back.

The next morning we splurged on the non-stop Leonardo train to Rome Termini. The €14 tickets don’t guarantee a seat, so we stood for the trip.

There we found our way to the Hilton Doubletree Monti, less than a 10-minute walk, where our room was ready.

It’s a decent place in a good location, even if we wouldn’t go out of our way to book it again. 

We enjoyed our dinner in the  Bono Bottega, or “Bono Experience” just around the corner.

https://bonomonti.com/

Here’s a closer look at a dish new to us, fried artichokes.

Yesterday we walked over to the site of the Jewish ghetto that existed in Rome from the 1500s to the 1800s. What a ghastly history!

We were reminded that Rome was built on seven hills.

It’s now known for trendy restaurants, several of which, including our choice, Il Giardino, feature artichokes cooked very differently from the ones we steam and serve at home.

The owner sits out front carving up the artichoke, telling us he trims about three hundred a day.

Our iPhones told us we walked about five miles in total on the bumpy and hilly streets of Rome, so we rewarded ourselves with  a return to Bono, where we enjoyed another tasty meal.

Carbonara…

Saltimbocca…

Today we’re en route to Lucca, a charming little walled city we’ve previously visited a number of times.  We’re looking forward to four nights there before flying home from Rome.