How to have a\u00a0timely departure from FCO:
\n1) Book a 6am flight on British Airways
\n2) Have a pre-arranged taxi driver pick you up at 3:55 am.\u00a0 While you are casually standing outside your apartment building, trying to not look like a lunatic or a modestly-dressed streetwalker with luggage to the bemused bakery workers loading up goods for delivery.
\n3) Make sure the taxi driver\u00a0makes like a Formula One driver through the empty Rome streets.
\n4) You will walk into the terminal door at 4:18 am.
\n5) Go to the designated check-in counter, where there is no line, and check in. Walk past the Air France (and probably code shared with Delta) check in line with about a hundred people in it. Try not to be smug. (Of course they are probably flying direct, so they have their own reason to be smug)
\n6) Go through a rather indifferent security.
\nSettle at your gate and think about what you’re going to do for the next hour of free time in an empty airport where nothing is open.
\nI have no travel alarm clock, and my phone is a stupid Verizon phone, so it’s not Europe-compatible, so my solution to the “I’ve got to get up at 3:30 am dilemma” was to have Michael call me at 8:30 his time. Perfect. And a better wake up call than a hotel computer.
\nBy the way, the Gatwick employees are just so polite. I hear about the decline of service in England, but I guess they’re keeping Gatwick up to speed. The equivalent of their TSA people were just so terribly helpful.\u00a0 The\u00a0person assisting us in loading our things through the x-ray machine was practically motherly. And he was a 40-year old guy. “There you go! That’s right! Thanks so much! Lovely!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How to have a\u00a0timely departure from FCO: 1) Book a 6am flight on British Airways 2) Have a pre-arranged taxi driver pick you up at 3:55 am.\u00a0 While you are casually standing outside your apartment building, trying to not look like a lunatic or a modestly-dressed streetwalker with luggage to the bemused bakery workers loading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n