The day before we left NYC for the cruise portion of our Grand European Adventure, we went to a beautiful candlelight string quartet performance of ABBA’s greatest hits, at the Church of Heavenly Rest on the upper east side. It was unique, cheerful, and put us in the mood for all the churches and palaces we would be seeing in Europe.
After the performance, we packed our bags, made sure we had our plane tickets, our global rail passes, our passports, and a bunch of Euro. We were all set and ready to roll!
Trouble at the Airport
Our cruise was to depart Rome’s Civitavecchia port on Aug. 26. We originally booked a flight to Rome on an airline called Royal Air Maroc which would take us to Casablanca before heading to Rome. However, when we got to JFK airport, we sensed something was wrong. The airline desk agents kept disappearing and upon returning, they vaguely told us, “We are cleaning the plane” and “We’re having technical issues.” Trying to be patient, we checked out the Royal Air Maroc airline’s club, which was nice, but nothing special.
A Broken Wing and Cancelled Fight
The Royal Air Maroc plane kept getting delayed, and soon we became worried that we may not get to Rome before our cruise debarked. Four hours later, our flight was canceled because one of the wings wasn’t working.
Royal Air Maroc’s next available flight wouldn’t get us to Rome until after our ship debarked. Ugh. We were tired and cranky, and Monica was panicking. But, as usual, Pete Kelly knew exactly what to do.
Peter Kelly and Delta to the Rescue
Peter called his Amex concierge, and we were got the last two tickets on a Delta nonstop flight to Rome the next morning. Peter swiftly got our bags off the plane with the broken wing, made Royal Air Maroc give us our money back and free hotel and meal certificates for our trouble, and we left that Royal Air Maroc nonsense.
Actually, we are both fans of Delta. For us, no other airline comes close to Delta’s service and standards.
The TWA Hotel
We decided to stay the night at JFK airport instead of taking a taxi home and back to JFK a few hours later. That’s when we experienced the newest, most unique hotel in NYC: a new TWA hotel at the JFK airport designed to look and feel like a TWA terminal from the 1960s. It included a 1960s-themed restaurant, coffee shop, and multiple floors of TWA artifacts. It was fantastic! Monica was in nostalgia heaven and wanted to explore the hotel in detail, but Rome and our cruise were waiting.
On Delta, we had a fantastic flight to Rome and took a cab to the Civitavecchia cruse port to begin our cruise.