My family loves to travel, and we’ve been fortunate enough to do so quite a bit. During the summer of 2011, we took a trip to Europe, and a few stops in Italy were included on that trip. There were several places in Italy that we didn’t get to see. I hoped to one day return so that I could visit some of the key places we missed. Less than three years later, on April 20, 2014, we took an unexpected, last minute trip back to Italy. However, this was not the trip I had in mind.
April 20, 2011, was my grandfather’s birthday and also happened to be Easter Sunday. Somewhere around 8:00 that morning my dad’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, so he didn’t answer it. My mom’s phone then rang shortly afterwards, …show more content…
This made it difficult to scrape up enough cash to cover the cost of the tickets. Dad knew that my grandparents kept some cash in a safe in their home. It was an emergency and we were out of options, so he called Granddad, who gave him the combination to the safe. There was just enough cash in there to cover the balance of the tickets. Airline tickets can’t be purchased with cash on the computer or over the phone. Mom called Delta Airlines and explained the situation to someone who advised her to go to the airport and purchase the tickets at the Delta counter. With this information, Dad, Mom, and I quickly grabbed clothes and other necessities, threw them into our suitcases and ran out the door. It was now close to 10:30 and the flight we were hoping to catch was leaving at 12:30. With no traffic, it was going to take us forty-five minutes to get to the airport, and then we needed to purchase the tickets, and then make it through security. We were going to be cutting it …show more content…
It turned out that using cash to purchase one-way tickets to an international destination on the same day of travel throws up several red flags to security. That hadn’t occurred to us, but we understood it. After answering several questions and convincing them of the reason for our trip, we were free to leave.
It was just after noon and we were running to the gate where we were supposed to board the plane. We were worried we were going to miss the flight. We arrived at the gate just minutes before 12:30 and were relieved to find passengers still boarding. The flight had been delayed twenty minutes, which kept us from missing it.
The flight to Paris was a stressful one, hours in the air wondering if my grandmother would be alive when we landed. After we landed at Charles de Gaulle, we had a brief layover before the next flight. After the layover, we took the short flight to Bologna and then proceeded on a train to