Saturday 13/11/2010

We were at breakfast at 7am along with a lot of other guests who obviously wanted to get started with the day. Seeing as we had finshed breakfast and probably had time to get to the station and catch the 8:22am train to the airport we decided to do this.  Taxi trip this time cost 15 Euro - better price! Arrived at the airport station at the time we originally had planned to catch the train. The walk from the train station into the airport was a bit lengthy (no wories as we are used to walking). We were into the Check-in area (our check-in counter was listed as 208 and we entered near counter 400). We were able to check-in and be free of our bags. Lucky we had walked around a group of 60-80 Asians who were organising themselves and were lined up after we were finished our check-in. We went for a coffee and a Canadian couple who sat at the next table struck up a conversation and we sat there for about 45 minutes talking to them.  By the time we left them we only had time to go through customs and security and head for the boarding area.  This was a trek as well  - we followed arrows and signs to G3 which took us along a wide walkway, up an escalator and then onto a 2 carriage train which took us to the departure lounge area (a separate building).  The screen showed we were boarding at 11:25am for a 12:25pm departure (we were not looking forward to an hour onboard waiting). We boarded at 11:40am however the flight did not take off until 1:05pm anyway bound for Hong Kong.  Flight was uneventful except the 2 Italians in the seat in front talked very loadly and did not even stop after the lights went out.  I asked them to be quiet and they did.  Took off from Rome and as I was on a window seat and as the day was fine and sunny I was able to see quite a lot of Italy as we crossed, from 30,000 feet up.  I saw the sun set over the Black Sea (3:30pm Saturday Rome time).