We arrived in Oslo this afternoon. Our flight last night went well and the crew from HiFly was excellent, probably the best crew that I’ve ever flown with. They really went out of their way for us.
Going through immigration took forever, it always seems to in Norway. Our customs agent told us that many European countries have individual immigration deals with the US and that those supersede the Schengen Visa status so if we looked into it and knew what we were doing that we’d be able to potentially stay in Europe for closer to two years. This requires some research.
We had hours to kill at Oslo airport so we camped out in the food court area for a while, then we moved up to O’Leary’s where we ate two years ago, the last time that we flew through Oslo. The wait there was pretty long, but we managed to eventually get a shared seat with a woman from northern Norway. She had a big booth and was all alone. She, of course, had to ask us about what we thought of Trump. The “Trump Apology Tour” has officially begun. We’ve not even left the first airport yet and we are already being asked about it.
Luciana tried her first fish and chips here and liked it. She did a good job eating it.
From our lunch it was time to head to gate E15 and wait for our flight. We ended up getting delayed by about an hour and a half because the crew was late.
The flight from Oslo to Rome was just two hours and forty minutes. Not bad at all. No movies on this flight, but everyone slept, even I nodded off a little bit. The flight was actually cold so I had a blanket on me most of the time.
We arrived in Rome later than we had planned but not too bad. Dominica had arranged with the people renting us the apartment that we would be late so we were all set. No immigration to deal with as we did that in Norway so this was very fast. Rome’s airport got our luggage out super fast and the girls had a playground in the luggage area to keep them busy while we waited on the luggage. What a great airport.
We got a station wagon taxi for seventy five Euros that took us to our apartment. Dominica was impressed by my ability to talk to the taxi driver in Italian while we drove. It was only about thirty minutes.
Our apartment is right next to the Colosseum right in the middle of everything. The taxi ride took us by nearly everything as we came into town. We saw Vatican City, the Circus Maximus, Palantine Hill, Trajan’s Column, the Colosseum, the forum, the capital and tons more. Unbelievable.
Our host was waiting for us at the apartment. It’s a one bedroom, not a studio like advertised so even better, very small but comfortable.
It was midnight when we got into the apartment. I immediately set out and found pizza to bring back for everyone. I easily found a place around the corner and brought back half a pizza which Dominica and I loved. Luciana was not very interested, she wanted something with less cheese. Liesl tried it but did not like it.
And off to sleep. We are so tired!