Looking westward from Civitavecchia over the Tyrrhenian Sea
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph by J\u00fcrgen Schneider)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I can always find something to complain about.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I sat for two or three hours on Sunday in the Delta Lounge of JFK Airport in New York City.\u00a0 And their internet didn\u2019t work!<\/em>\u00a0 I\u2019m credibly assured that I lived for much of my life without instant access to the internet, and that I nonetheless did fairly well during those years.\u00a0 But I find that idea difficult to imagine, let alone to believe.\u00a0 Nowadays, even a very brief interruption in my access to the internet leaves me frustrated, depressed, and very, very nervous.\u00a0 Will it ever work again?\u00a0 Is the world coming to an end?<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was waiting for a flight to Rome.\u00a0 The flight was to be more than eight hours long!<\/em>\u00a0 Confined almost entirely to one uncomfortable seat!\u00a0 Almost nine hours!\u00a0 Mediocre food!\u00a0 No Fairlife chocolate milk!\u00a0 The sheer horror of it!\u00a0 <\/em>Of course, just a few short generations ago, I would have had to endure several somewhat dangerous weeks on a very uncomfortable sailing vessel, followed by perhaps several days of land travel up to the Eternal City.\u00a0 (It must be said, by the way, that the food was far worse than I had anticipated.\u00a0 I ate almost none of it.\u00a0 Usually, it\u2019s just not very good; this time, I thought it was inedible.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Years and years back \u2014 I think that I\u2019ve told this story before \u2014 I was obliged to make a flight from Chicago to Salt Lake City.\u00a0 I think that it took the better part of five hours, and I had to sit in a middle seat and to eat only pretzels.\u00a0 It was horrible.\u00a0 And then I began to reflect that I was flying a route and a distance that were not altogether dissimilar to that taken by the early Latter-day Saint pioneers traveling from Nauvoo to the Great Basin or, even, with handcarts from Iowa City to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll bet that they would have enjoyed<\/em> a few pretzels and perhaps an icy-cold soft drink or two, consumed while relaxing in a padded middle seat.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was a child, we would often watch a cartoon on television called The Jetsons<\/em>.\u00a0 It was a cousin to the more popular show The Flintstones<\/em>, and it was set in the distant, technologically more advanced future.\u00a0 In one episode, Mrs. Jetson was facing the need to prepare a large holiday meal for friends and family.\u00a0 She tossed a small pill-like object into a Plexiglas cube and, instantly, a Thanksgiving turkey appeared, with all the trimmings, dressing, cranberry sauce, and so forth.\u00a0 \u201cCooking,\u201d she sighed, \u201cis such a chore!\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sometimes I think of that episode, and, regrettably, I see a bit of Mrs. Jetson in myself.\u00a0 Life is so very, very tough for us twenty-first century Norteamericanos<\/em>!\u00a0 A few hours ago, I was in midtown Manhattan, about a three-minute walk from Carnegie Hall.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019m on the Mediterranean coast about ninety minutes from Rome via the autostrada<\/em>.\u00a0 And what a terrible ordeal it was to get here!<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago, by the way, I was in the Old City of Jerusalem.\u00a0 Since then, I\u2019ve been mostly in Utah Valley.\u00a0 What would the pioneers of 1847 have thought of that?\u00a0 What would Orson Hyde have made of it?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it quite reasonably have been considered a miracle?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But not all complaints demand imagination, ingratitude, and hypersensitivity.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We landed very early this morning at Rome\u2019s Aeroporto Internazionale Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 However, since we\u2019re going on a cruise, we were signed up for COVID-19 antigen tests there at the airport.\u00a0 Just a few weeks ago, we were required to take a COVID-19 test at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, and it went well.\u00a0 Very efficient.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not so here!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We found the place for the tests and got into the very long line.\u00a0 Which didn\u2019t move for about two hours or so.\u00a0 And people who kept arriving at the line and who were about to miss their airline departures kept being moved into place ahead of us.\u00a0 (It made sense, of course, but it showed that the system was completely nuts.\u00a0 [I na\u00efvely thought, at that time, that there was<\/em> a system!])\u00a0 After about two hours, an official moved us from the line to an area over on the side, telling us that she would return to us and get us back into the process once the urgent cases were taken care of.\u00a0 She never did.\u00a0 After about an hour of additional waiting, we flagged her down and she said that we would have to wait there indefinitely.\u00a0 I asked whether we would be able, if we stayed there, to take the test today<\/em>.\u00a0 She said that yes, of course<\/em>, sometime we would be able to take the test.\u00a0 But there was absolutely no predicting when<\/em>.\u00a0 It was total chaos, and the line kept growing longer and longer.\u00a0 There was no distinction between people who had pre-registered and people who hadn\u2019t.\u00a0 Everybody had to stand in the same seemingly static line.\u00a0 You could see the doctors and nurses standing around in the middle distance, waiting to administer their test, but almost nobody was getting to them.\u00a0 I would guess that we saw at least fifty people miss their flights.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
We gave up.\u00a0 We left.\u00a0 We caught a taxi down to Civitavecchia, the ancient Etruscan city where the Emperor Trajan (AD 53-117) constructed Rome\u2019s major harbor in the early second century after Christ, and found that there was a pharmacy located practically next door to our excellent little hotel here \u2014 the Gallery Suite<\/a>, at 28 Viale Guido Bacelli, whose people have been (I won\u2019t bore you by giving details) exceptionally kind and helpful \u2014 where, for \u20ac15,\u00a0 we could get the test done within minutes<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
So here are two pieces of friendly advice from your one-stop source for counsel and direction:\u00a0 If you ever find that you\u2019re going to be staying in Civitavecchia, consider the Gallery Suite.\u00a0 It looks like less than nothing from the outside, but it\u2019s very nice on the inside and it\u2019s well located within the town.\u00a0 (We walked about a bit and enjoyed some pizza and some really delicious gelato.)\u00a0 And, unless you hear some strong newer advice to the contrary or have no alternative, do not \u2014 absolutely do not \u2014 try to take a COVID-19 test at Rome\u2019s airport.\u00a0 You can get one at a pharmacy.\u00a0 I really suspect that we might tell be there even now, nearly twelve hours later, if we had stayed there.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Civitavecchia, Italy<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 I can always find something to complain about. \u00a0 I sat for two or three hours on Sunday in the Delta Lounge of JFK Airport in New York City.\u00a0 And their internet didn\u2019t work!\u00a0 I\u2019m credibly assured that I lived for much of my life without instant access to the internet, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29256,24400,8031,13514,9108,29265,29259,29262,16001,29268],"class_list":["post-95169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aeroporto-internazionale-leonardo-da-vinci-di-fiumicino","tag-airport","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid","tag-covid-19","tag-da-vinci","tag-fiumicino","tag-leonardo-da-vinci","tag-test","tag-tests"],"yoast_head":"\n
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