The Joy of Traveling

I just love air travel, don't you? Especially when everything goes so smoothly. It's such a relief to get to the airport with no traffic jams on the way. Then you can avail yourself of one of the many e-ticket kiosks to check in where a nice lady will tag your bag and whisk it away on the conveyor belt. You breeze through security and with shoes in hand make your way to your gate. And what a comforting sight to see at the end of it all:


Slightly less comforting is to turn around two seconds later and see this instead:



At least I didn't have to wait long to have my worst fears realized. The nice lady at the podium kindly announced that anyone traveling to Rome, Barcelona or Venice would definitely not make their connections. Thank you. Thank you so much.

So, it's back down to ticketing where I did manage to get on another flight leaving tonight. I'll be taking my original busted up flight to Philly after all. From there I'll fly to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt it's on to Venice where I'll arrive at 1:40 pm, only about four hours after my original arrival time.

Plus, the great guy who helped me was also able to transfer Mom's tickets to the same flights as me. Granted I did exaggerate slightly to the guy that she was "older" and "nervous" traveling even though my mother has traveled all around the globe and is quite capable of handling anything, but you know, desperate times... I wanted to make sure we got on the same flights. So all in all, I think this turned out rather well. We'll see how well in my next post. I'm already preparing titles:
"Sleepover at the Philadelphia International Airport"
or
"What to do in Frankfurt Germany for 10 hours (More wursts anyone?)
or
"Wait, we said Venice, not Venezuela!"
We shall see...