Sunday 19 November
We set alarms to get up at 06:15. We had a quick breakfast and completed packing the last few things such as toiletries. I went out to take out all of the garbage, separated into paper, plastic bottles, food waste, and mixed waste. The apartment instructions said we had to take it out to a public collection point in the nearby piazza by 10:00 for collection there. We’d seen large waste bins there when walking past in previous days, but when I went this time there were none! I thought I might just have to dump the bags on the footpath and hope someone collected them, but then I saw some smaller bins a little way down a side street. The first one I tried was locked, but fortunately the others weren’t and I managed to put the food and bottles in appropriate bins. I didn’t see a paper bin, so ended up putting that in with the mixed waste.
We left the apartment just before 07:00, walking with our luggage along the street to Spagna metro station, where we caught a train to Termini. There we bought tickets for the Leonardo Express to Fiumicino Airport, but saw that the next departure wasn’t until 07:50! So we had about 25 minutes to wait. We decided to go to the platform, where several of the express trains were standing end to end, but then we spotted signs saying that the train wasn’t running today and there was a replacement bus. Following the signs took us outside where a worker in a red uniform vest told us to walk down the street a hundred metres or so to where his colleagues in red vests were loading the buses. We got there and put our large bags in the bus luggage compartment then climbed on board. The bus left about ten minutes earlier than the scheduled train time, so that was okay, and we got to Fiumicino about 08:15, earlier than the train would have arrived.
We checked in, went through security and passport control, and then went to relax a bit in the Plaza Lounge before boarding. This lounge wasn’t as nice as the Singapore SilverKris lounge, but it was okay. M. got a couple of coffees and some small cornetti for her last Italian breakfast, while I ate the last of the apples that we’d bought a few days ago. Eventually we went to the gate and boarded the plane. It was delayed pushing back from the gate by about 15 minutes before departure due to flight congestion. Hopefully that won’t cause us to be too late into Singapore, as our connection time is tight there.
Monday 20 November
Our first flight landed in Singapore just before sunrise. We only had 25 minutes before boarding began for our flight to Sydney, so not much time to do a lot. We both tried to snooze on the flights. We arrived back in Sydney about 17:45. We had a dream run out of the airport, thanks to not having to wait for any checked luggage. There were no other flights arriving and the arrivals areas for immigration control and customs were completely empty. Many people went to wait for luggage while we just waked straight out.
We caught a train and were home before 19:00. Then we had to drive over to our friends’ place to collect Scully!
Tuesday 21 November
I went to bed about 23:00, read until I fell asleep, and slept until about 05:00 before becoming wide awake, so that wasn’t too bad. Mostly I took it easy, because I wasn’t feeling great. I did go for a run, the first since before the trip. I thought I’d do an easy 5k, but by 2.5k I was utterly worn out and stopped there.
I basically just spent time unpacking and cleaning up all the stuff around the house. I revived the sourdough starter and made a loaf of bread. Oh, and I went through maybe 100 emails that I had to deal with in some way. Hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep and be back in the correct time zone by tomorrow!