Vacations gone bad (or from hell)

[WVU alpha phi]

Spent two weeks in Italy the beginning of this summer and everything that could go wrong, did.

Our flight was late leaving from DC, so we missed a connecting flight in Frankfurt, Germany. The next flight to Venice wasn't for another 5 hours, so after my parents putting up a big fight, they told us we were booked on a flight to Zurich, Switzerland, and from there we'd get to Venice around 6pm. We were originally supposed to land in Venice at 9am. United gave us a handwritten piece of paper and told us to present it to the United reps at Zurich, who would give us our boarding passes.

Well, we get to Zurich and find out that basically the Frankfurt employees lied to us. The paper "tickets" meant nothing and we were not booked on the Venice flight, which was full. This meant waiting another 4 hours in Zurich's airport. We finally landed in Venice at 9pm, 12 hours after we were supposed to arrive.

Venice was great, beautiful weather.. the next drama came when we took the train to Florence. Twenty minutes after getting off the train, I realized I'd left one of my bags on it. My mom and I waited in the WRONG line for nearly an hour, and luckily when we were finally directed to the right place, they were able to locate my bag and it was returned that night.

We spent two days in Florence and got stuck on a walking tour in a HUGE downpour, everyone was SOAKED. Plus the typical weather in Italy for late May-early June is in the 80s, so everyone in my family had brought only one cold-weather outfit. Probably 10 out of 14 days there the weather was rainy, windy, and in the 60s.

Rome was next, and my wallet got stolen one night, which meant having to cancel the credit cards at 2 AM and making a trip to the American Embassy to make sure I could get back into the country with just my passport. My dad's credit card was also stolen in Venice, but no charges had come up yet.

Sorrento (the Amalfi coast) was the last portion of the trip, and the weather actually cleared up to sunny but still in the 60s. It was definitely the most relaxing part of the vacation.

On the way home, our flight was delayed leaving Rome, so we missed our connecting flight in Zurich, Switzerland. We were booked on a flight 2 hours later to Boston. Everything was going according to schedule in Boston, and then when we boarded, we sat on the runway for over 2 hours after being told we were 26th in line to take off. We landed in DC around 10pm (instead of the original 2pm time) and thought "well atleast we won't hit traffic on the way home." WRONG: an accident on 495 kept us in standstill traffic for 45 minutes.