Family Genealogy Trip to Italy.
Day 19: Tuesday, 6 November 2018.
Fiumicino, flight home.
Got up, had coffee, took cab to airport.
More coffee in airport, in a tiny restaurant among the hideous, all-shopping “gates” area.
Though the Italians get major, major kudos for naming their capital city airport after an artist-scientist-thinker (rather than a politician, yawn), they lose points for having figured out how to make an entire airport into a shopping mall.
You know how you usually check in, go through security, then pass through a hall of duty-free stores where you buy chocolates to get rid of your extra coins before peeling off to a corridor of gates with areas of seats with a few coffee bars around?
Not so Fiumicino any more. You never get “past” the stores. They are everywhere: next to the seats, next to the bathrooms, next to everything. There is noise and chaos everywhere.
Some would say “noise and chaos everywhere” describes Italy accurately, and, therefore this airport is…representative.
Oh my, I am getting cranky, and I’m not even on the plane yet. This trip is definitely over.
