Lido di Ostia

We spent our last night in Italy in Lido di Ostia, a resort town at the end of the line about 30 miles west of Rome, a metro ride from the Termini station and transfer to a train, maybe an hour’s trip total. The primary reason was that our hotel, the Belvedere Century, was near the airport (15 minute shuttle), so we wouldn’t have to wake early our last morning and hassle with luggage from the hotel to train station to airport. But Lido di Ostia is also a popular beach resort, apparently crowded during the summer months, and we thought there might be interesting restaurants and things to do there. But those assumptions did not turn out to be realized. For one thing it is a summer resort and we were there in April. It was essentially deserted. The beach was empty, the umbrellas and changing rooms shoved up in storage against the main road. A number of the hotels and restaurants looked to be closed for the season. Only a few locals, teenagers looking for something to do and older people looking for someone to talk with, ventured out on the outdoor mall across from our hotel. When we checked in, the desk clerk seemed bothered by our interruption of his surfing the net. As far as we could tell there were maybe five other rooms occupied for the night. We walked out on a pier from the beach, a few others huddled in coats in the wind and overcast, slate-gray sky. The whole feel was Coney Island in February. We wandered about and finally found a restaurant that turned out to be not that bad (though we were the only customers, perhaps of the whole night; the young waiter was more interested in the soccer game on the TV than on how we were doing). And ironically the hour we were to save by being close to the airport turned out not to exist. The shuttle left at 8:00 and 10:00, and we wanted to leave at 9:00 for an 11:30 plane. So we ended up having to take the 8:00, about the same time we would have had to leave a hotel in Rome had we stayed there, with the choice of restaurants, ruins, and streets to roam the night before. Instead of the hour from the Rome Termini to the airport, we spent the hour biding our time in the airport. One lives, one learns. . . . Well, one lives.

Idiot In A Strange Land

I was the witless victim of a scam in the Rome train station. Having nothing else to do, we had sat in our seats 45 minutes before our train to Salerno was to leave, and as soon as my wife had gone to the restroom, the guy came out of nowhere (as is their wont), looking like a homeless man with a faux badge – dirty jeans, T-shirt, oily disheveled hair . . . and a laminated badge with picture of someone on it pinned to his chest. He sat down opposite me, the only other person in the car, and asked for my ticket, which I gave to him. He had a laminated badge. In Italian (which I neither speak nor understand) he says that I need to pay an additional €20 as a fee for going from Naples (one stop for the train) to Salerno (the next). I point out that I’ve already paid for the tickets to go to Salerno, but he has a ragged book with figures he’s written in, and asks me to write my name and destination and €20 to his list in his book. I protest slightly, but finally just give him his (formerly my) €20. He leaves, and I already know I’ve been had.

He obviously had me tagged as an easy mark as we were getting on the train, and waited on my wife to leave to get one-on-one with me, the only one in the car. If there would have been anyone else around, they would have no doubt spoken up against the scam. If the transaction would have been in English (or if I were fluent in Italian), it would have been very different:  “You need to pay me an additional €20 fee to go to Salerno.” “Who are you? And no I don’t.” “Yes, you do, look at my laminated badge and ragged book.” “Why don’t we find the conductor, who, if there were such a fee, would be the one to collect it?” But I don’t speak Italian, and so was intimidated, an idiot confronted by an ill-dressed con artist. As I handed over the €20 bill, I was telling myself, “You deserve to lose this, you dumb asshole.” There is, at least, some comfort in being a knowing fool.

A Good Airfare

The Amalfi Coast has been toward the top of our travel list since at least six years ago when I escorted a group of college students to Italy and spent several days in Amalfi (I only got the students to and from the airport in Rome; I was on my own for the rest of two weeks). The next year my wife and I traveled to Italy, mainly because she hadn’t been able to go with me the year before, but we only had ten days there and I (having been three times before) decided that Rome (the Forum, Vatican, Borghese Gallery) and Florence (the Uffizzi, Ponte Vecchio, David) were probably numbers one and two on the list of Italian cities in terms of history and art. But the Amalfi Coast is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, so it’s lingered near the top of our list.

So for the past several months I’ve been monitoring airfares to Rome or Naples, hoping to catch a slip in cost that would give us an advantage. And last week I hit on a rate at least $200 less per ticket on American Airlines (our preferred) than what I had been finding, and we bought it.

Just yesterday, though, American filed for bankruptcy. Curious as to how this might affect our Amalfi trip, I followed all the news stories I could find, and was comforted to learn that the bankruptcy would not disrupt flight schedules or frequent flier miles. But I wondered how airfares might have been affected, so I checked into the American online reservation site and was pleased (though not surprised) to find that the cost of our itinerary had almost doubled, from $1750 to $2500 (two fares plus taxes and fees). 

It’s an interesting pleasure. Part is the satisfaction of having regularly monitored airfares to finally find a decent fare (less actually than when I first went six years ago), and part in seeing that fare balloon up in just the next few days. No doubt I’ll be drilling all of those poor souls around us on the plane about how much their tickets cost. Or perhaps that might not be such a good idea. It might be best to just keep quiet and gloat in silence while I watch the in-flight movie.