Tags: Colosseum England flight Flight Attendant Florida Italy London Naples Philadelphia Rome Trevi Fountain United Airlines Vatican City

We took a chance this weekend and flew to Rome. Yes, last week we realized that he would have 6 days off in a row. So I had been watching the flights for most of the week. The flight started with about 10 or so seats on it. Now you wouldn’t think that so many people would book flights from the United States to Rome with less than a week left to go but they did. We had a back up plan though. If we didn’t make Rome we would go to Vegas. The Vegas flight was scheduled to leave 20 minutes before the Rome flight. The gates were fairly close and we had not booked a hotel yet. We figured as soon as we got our tickets in hand we would book a hotel. We were going to use Priceline but decided to stay in the crew hotel in Rome.

We flew to Philly and had to wait about 5 hours for the flight to Rome. Around 4pm there were still 4 seats left on the plan and only 2 non-revs ahead of us. We figured we would be good because it was unlikely that anyone would book an international flight 2 hours before it is scheduled to leave unless they were another non-rev and they normally only do that for domestic flights.

We then called the hotel and booked it. The flight over was uneventfull we landed on Saturday and took a shuttle bus to the hotel to check in. Well, when we got there the woman could not find our reservation. After many minutes of waiting we figured out that the person that made the reservation entered our name in incorrectly and also my husband had written written down the wrong confirmation number. Once that was over we went to our room and cleaned up. We do not sleep when we get to a destination unless it is late at night there. We change and hit the streets. Also my husband does not typically sleep on the plane either (he is a machine at least that’s what he always tells me).

We went to Vatican City and then we walked over to the other side of the river and saw Trevi Fountain and The Colosseum we walked around for the entire day and ate lunch by the river after having purchased two sandwiches from a street vendor. After spending the day in Rome we went out to dinner at a restaurant near the Vatican Museum and then back to our hotel room for a good nights sleep.

We woke up this morning at 6 am so that we could take the shuttle back to the airport. We enjoyed a complimentary breakfast at the hotel and headed out. Back to the airport to board the plane back home, which was full of a bunch of High School kids from Napes, Florida. With any luck we would have been home by 10pm.

Yes, you read this right we would have been home by 10pm. We were on the flight back to Philly and comfortably in our seats and each of us had just finished watching a movie when my husband puts on his the GPS on the little tv on the seat in front of him and notices that we are about and hour from our destination of London, yes I said London. We then look up and see six of the flight attendants walking to the front of the plane. Well after several minutes they start walking back toward us one at a time. We stop one of them and ask if we are being diverted (in a low voice) and she states they aren’t sure. Well we tell her that the GPS states we are headed to London. She goes back to the front and talks to one of the other flight attendants and then shortly thereafter they announce that we are being diverted to London because there is an unidentified bag in our cargo from a United Airlines plane and because of security we need to land in London to get it taken off.

So now we are sitting on the plane headed to Philly with a four hour delay and missing our scheduled flight home that have over 30 seats available. We had landed in London and they took the bag off I’m assuming, refueled and we then left on our merry way. We are hoping that we can catch a later flight out of Philly to Charlotte and then home but I don’t think that is likely. I Will let you know how it goes.

Here is a question for you guys my husband says since we landed in London I can count it as being there and post it on Facebook Places I’ve visited, but I say it doesn’t count unless I’ve actually gotten off of the plane. What do you think?