Traveling Light in Palermo
Work took me down to Palermo, Sicily this week for a conference. It was a very short trip - I left on Thursday and returned Saturday morning. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Alitalia managed to cancel my original flight, mess up my connection to Rome (delaying my arrivial by 5 hours), lose my bags, and somewhere in there compeletly cancelled my entire return trip reservation. To say that Alitalia has 3rd world customer service would be an insult to 3rd world airline companies.
On Saturday morning, I was told as I attempted to check-in that my reservation had been completely cancelled, and they didn't know why, but it must be my fault for not confirming my flight 42 hours in advance (note: the tickets weren't even purchased until 42 hours in advance). There I was, at 5am on a Saturday, wearing the same suit I had worn on Thursday (by now very smelly due to the tropical temperatures), in contact lenses that hadn't been washed in two days (because no one in Europe seems to have ever heard of hard contact lenses), and I'll admit the unsuspecting ticket agent bore the brunt of my wrath. But he did find my reservation. Rather quickly.
The only 'sightseeing' I did was during my walk from the hotel to the conference site. I allowed an hour for a leisurely stroll, but I have to say that Palermo isn't exactly made for pedestrians. Here are the pictures I managed to snap:
This is a Cathedral that I walked past. I love the eastern influence...
Pretty sure the picture above is a theater. Wouldn't swear to it, but I didn't have a guide book.
The Palazzo Dei Normanni courtyard where we had the conference. I love the Italian Renaissance!! The picture below is the view out the window of the conference hall. Beautiful weather...although the sun was on it's way down by the time the conference ended for the day.
Friday night the conference had a very chic dinner party at the palace, complete with a live string quartet and the mayor of Palermo in attendance. I've never seen so much silk and designer evening clothes in my life (again...me in my smelly black suit as opposed to my cute little thai silk number stowed away in my bags).
Anyway, happy to be home. It's now Monday...still no sign of my bag, and I can't even get anyone to pick up the phone at the lost luggage department. More disturbing, the baggage tracking website claims that my lost luggage number is invalid.
Posted @ 2:24 PM
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I'll add yours to the list of Alitalia horror stories, though I think yours is probably the worst I've heard. They're always losing bags, though. I hope yours come through soon. Yes, that's a theater--it's the 2nd largest in Europe or something, and I stayed across from it when I was working at the museum. I'll try to give you a call this week--last week involved midterms and stuff so I was a little caught up in things.
Luggage update: it finally showed up on Friday night at 9pm (after 8 days missing). Whew!! My glasses and I happily reunited.
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