TRAVEL CONFUSION
A week ago I saw a round trip inexpensive ticket from Asheville to Rome. For a couple of months I’ve been talking with Rob Amberg, a photographer who lives half an hour from Asheville about going along with him when he goes back to Sicily this fall. I went to his birthday party in Letojanni two years ago along with many of his relatives and a large number of people from Marshall as well as people who have helped support his documentary photography. His parents emigrated from Sicily and he wants to spend a couple of months learning about his Sicilian roots. I would go along to help share the cost of accomodations and to be a companion to support him in what he wants to do.
I wanted to fly round trip from Asheville so that no one would have to drive me to Charlotte where the cheapest tickets usually are and Rob was going to fly from Charlotte because he had a free place to leave his car during the trip and was going to come back later than me so could not give me a ride back from Charlotte. Our plans were far enough along that it seemed safe for me to buy the non refundable, non changeable ticket, then to wait in Rome until Rob showed up and join him for the train ride the length of Italy to Sicily. So I bought the ticket and immediately wrote to Rob to tell him my plan. I had a day in which I could cancel the ticket if it didn’t suit him. I didn’t hear back and with Susie’s help began to look for a inexpensive hotel in Rome.
Yesterday I met Rob at Zadie’s at the concert by Picker’s Anonymous and he said that suddenly his plans might be upended. Leslie, his wife, whom I had gotten to know and enjoy being with in Sicily, suddenly felt that she had put off too long surgery for a hernia which had been attempted three times before, with the mesh used to hold her together coming loose each time. She felt she might not be able to wait until he came back from his trip.
So suddenly I am up in the air and need to figure out what to do with my nonrefundable ticket to Rome. The big cost of visiting Europe is getting across the Atlantic. Once in Europe onward tickets on budget airlines are very inexpensive. So I am beginning to dream, if Rob can’t go, of combining a short visit to Rome with a long visit to Naoussa on the island of Paros in Greece, where I have been twice before.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 