Hello everyone! So I know that I never finished this blog, but to be honest after Paris nothing to big happened. However, I feel like I need to write down my adventures on my return home from Rome.
Ok. So my flight was to leave the Rome airport at 6:30 a.m. December 17th which means to be there a couple of hours early I would have to be in the airport by 4:30. You should that I am not a great morning person. At all. So I had the brilliant idea of staying up all night so as to not risk any chance of missing my flight. So that is exactly what I did. Around 3:30 I hailed a taxi, along with a fellow classmate, and rode to the airport. However, we discovered a little too late that neither of us had enough money to pay the driver. So we were both freaking out and hoping that the driver would be understanding. When the time came to pay we apologized in our broken Italian and gave him all the money that we had. He turned out to be very sweet and told us "no problem". We both sighed a sigh of relief both thinking that the rest of our travels were down hill from here. How wrong I was.
I said goodbye to my classmate and made my way to my terminal. About two hours later I was on my plane waiting for it to take off....Another two hours later, I was still waiting for the plane to take off. Finally the captain came on the P.A. and told us that the Amsterdam airport, for which this plane was headed to, was closed due to a snow storm. We were ushered off of the plane and told to wait in the terminal. About four hours later we were once again allowed to return to the plane and with another 45 minute delay we were allowed to take off. So, I thought the worst was over and settled in to sleep. Boy, can I ever be right?
The plane started to descend an hour before it was scheduled to. The captain came back on the P.A. and told us that the Amsterdam airport had once again been closed and that we were landing in Paris instead. What?! At this point I have had about an hour of sleep and I was stressed. We were taken off the plane again and told to wait in the terminal for further directions. I decided to stick with a group of English speaking people who seemed to know what they were doing. A couple of them were traveling home to Amsterdam and were as frustrated as I was with the whole situation. They seemed to sense that I was on the brink of crying because they sort of took me under their wing and made sure that I was taken care of.
We were taken out of the terminal to the ticket booth were there was already a rapidly forming line. As we waited we tried to talk to someone who worked at the airport about our situation. All of the airport clerks treated us horribly and were very unhelpful, except for one young lady. She was very patient with us and made sure that we were well taken care of. The Amsterdam folks told me to rush and cut the line to talk to her so that I would be taken care of. She told me that the earliest that I may be able to leave was Sunday afternoon, which means that I would be stuck in the airport for over 24 hours. I really started to tear up when I heard that until she exclaimed that there is one last seat on a plane to Dublin which was to leave the next morning at 10. I gladly accepted the alternative plans and was given the ticket along with a complimentary meal ticket.
So, I had a way home. However, I was still stressed about letting my parents know where I was and when they need to pick me up when I arrived at the Chicago airport, plus I had no way how to navigate this giant airport. I will type more late my hands are getting tired and I want to do this story Justice. Good night!
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