We didn’t do much on our last day in Bologna as we had a midday flight and Chris’s parents wanted to get to the airport nice and early. We just had breakfast and went out for one more coffee as our hotel, though in many ways excellent, was not good at coffee.
We also didn’t do much else in England as we were there for such a short time. We only had time to see one friend who lives in the area. Most of our other friends are in Sussex, so unfortunately, we didn’t have time to see any of them. We had one more curry and packed up to leave.
Our last flight was the worst in terms of airport related stress for a few reasons. We nearly didn’t get on. The previous day’s Phoenix flight had been canceled, so this one was attempting to absorb all of them, plus all of us. We had to wait for several hours to find out if we would even have tickets. For about 3 hours, Chris had one and I didn’t. There was also a two hour delay in leaving. We were given a few vouchers for our trouble, so we had 10 quid worth of coffee and sandwiches at Costa, a popular UK coffee chain. Once we got tickets and went through security, we used another 20 pounds worth of vouchers to eat dinner, so Chris had a British spaghetti bolognese at the Italian chain in the terminal. It had quite a lot more tomato and basil than the Italian version.
Once we finished our dinner and went to the gate, the annoyances continued. For some bizarre reason, we all had to queue to sit down in the waiting area, which meant standing for ages. My feet, legs, back and glutes are still extremely angry at me from the excessive standing this journey entailed. After sitting down for a short time, we then had to queue again to take a bus to the plane as there appeared to be renovations taking place that prevented this being done properly. To make matters worse, there was a single bus for this entire large group of people. I mean, this was a double decker plane. It took ages to get us all to the plane itself, causing us to leave even later than the original 2 hour delay.
We managed to get an upgrade, but just one. This was because we were unable to get seats together, so they figured whether one of us was there or we used it as a bargaining chip, it would help us. I did spend enough time in business class to drink one glass of champagne before we decided to offer the ticket to the woman sitting next to Chris in economy. She very happily swapped with me.
We met a fellow Youtuber who was in the window seat who did some filming for us. Have a look at the video:
As a final note about this trip, one of the reasons it ended up happening was because we had a dangling ticket. This advice probably applies to only a small group of people who are immigrating or, that for one reason or the other, only need a one way ticket. Don’t get a dangling ticket. Just buy what you actually need. We got one because the price of our initial flight to Phoenix to move there in January was the same (or quite close to the same) as buying a return. Using the return tickets ended up being very complicated and meant we ended up traveling before we were really settled enough for it to not be a bit problematic. Basically, I think we were wildly overly optimistic in regards to when we thought we would be ready for an international trip after such a big move. We actually still have a dangling ticket, but we have decided to let it lapse and visit people with fresh tickets when we are more settled.
I don’t know how long it takes on average to settle into a place after moving. I reckon it took me about a year when I moved to the UK and that was with one of us, Chris, already having an established life there. I would imagine it will be at least a year, if not more than that, until we feel truly settled into our lives here. It’s not to say we aren’t really enjoying where we live, but it takes time to work all the kinks out and really get into a routine in a new city and country. It still feels like every other week there is some major thing we have to sort out. I think it will also just be a long time before I feel the itch to get on an airplane. My travel bug is really and truly satiated for the time being.