Snafu

We were supposed to fly to Milan, Italy on Thursday. The confirmed route was MSP to Paris on Delta, then Paris to Milan on Air France. On Wednesday morning, we received an email from Air France -- band news, "good" news. The bad news, they said, was that our Paris to Milan flight had been canceled. The "good" news ("good" according to this email) was that they had rebooked us on an alternate route: Paris to New York JFK and then back to Milan. Clearly ridiculous!

We called our travel company, OAT, and they were sympathetic. But they told us that Air France had somehow "locked" the reservation, so they were unable to touch it. So I called Air France and waited on hold approximately forever before speaking to a human. She was very polite and understanding, agreed that the trip back to JFK was ridiculous, and changed our route from MSP to ATL (Atlanta) to Milan, all on Delta.

When I checked my Delta app, it still showed MSP to Paris to JFK to Milan, even though I had ticket numbers and everything in an email from Air France. I called the 800 number in the email later in the day, remained on hold for a long time once again, and spoke to a man who assured me that we were confirmed on the new itinerary. OK.

The next day we went to the airport, print-outs of our email from Air France in hand. But when we tried to check in at the Delta desk, they were unable to find anything about the new reservation in their system. Nor were they able to access or change the old reservation because Air France had "locked" them out. So they were unable to issue boarding passes for us. 

Then they told us that all flights to Milan for the day had been canceled due to a transit strike! We stood at the desk for more than an hour, while they called various IT people to try unlocking the booking. Eventually, they booked us on a Delta flight to Amsterdam then next afternoon, with a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Milan. We would start our trip a day late.

We had to Uber back home from the airport, and then Uber back again the next day. So glad that we could support poor, immigrant Uber drivers, but out approximately $40 for a fruitless trip to the airport and back.

When we eventually got to Milan, we discovered that there really was not labor strike, and that all other flights had arrived on time the previous day -- including the flight from Atlanta that we were supposed to have been on, if Air France hadn't done whatever they did in the computer.

Very frustrating, but we finally arrived. A driver picked us up at the airport and drove us to the small city of Lecco on the shore of Lake Como. It's a beautiful place, and the view from our hotel room is stunning!

Although jet-lagged, we had a drink with our tour leader, who filled us in on what little we had missed in the previous day. Then we walked into Lecco for a short, self-guided tour. There was wine-tasting festival, but we only walked through. We didn't think a lot of wine would be a good idea with little sleep and a time zone change. But we did visit the local cathedral and walk the pedestrian street.

Cathedral bell tower

Our group members gathered for a presentation on Italian politics. The presenter was very good, but we could not keep our eyes open during the lecture.

The group had its welcome dinner in the evening, and we managed to stay awake for the meal. But we crashed immediately after, and slept very well the entire night.