Tag Archives: Flight SFO to Palermo

In Transit, San Francisco To Palermo

Overview

We are now ensconced in our apartment in Trapani. Night is falling and we are pretty tired. My planning was good thus far. It could be improved.  We made all our connections with time to spare, even the “tight” one in Rome.  I had called Alitalia and a representative assured me that we would have no problem at all with a hour and twenty minutes if we did not check baggage.  In Rome,  Europcar was fantastic.

We took no photos while in transit, particularly while going through Dublin’s baggage screening.

First getting from SFO to Palermo.

We closed down our house and took Uber to SFO well ahead of time, March 30th.  We planned to arrive three hours early, but frittered that away to two hours.  Ellen is a fastidious packer.

Our Uber X driver was loquacious.  The drive to SFO went quickly.  I booked our flight through justfly.com.  The rates were the lowest I could find. Justfly listed Turkish Air flights at a lower price.  I don’t know why, but I just did not want to fly Turkish Air.  Interestingly JustFly booked us through British Airways who “share” a Aer Lingus flight.  Our flight took us from SFO to Dublin to Rome with a four hour layover in Dublin, longer than optimal and not nearly sufficient time to make a trip to the city possible.  (Next Time I would take a day in Dublin before heading on to Rome)

Our  airfare was $276.00 USD for the two of us.  However Taxes and Fees including seat assignment was $1462.50, Purchase guarantee (trip insurance) was $39.98 for a grand total of $1780.48. About $840 per person.  At the time I booked seats Turkish Air was about $650, though I have no idea what additional fees might be involved.  What was strange is JustFly charged a fee to book us through British.

Aer Lingus SFO to Dublin

I called BA who suggested I call Aer Lingus for seat assignments. I had waited too long to make seat assignments on our SFO to Dublin leg and had to wait until at check-in 24 hours ahead of departure.  The Aer Lingus representative helped with seat assignments on our other outbound and two inbound legs.  She was great. The outbound leg remained a mystery until check-in.

Accessing Aer LIngus’ website 24 hours ahead,, things went fine until “seat assignment” when the website stated “all seats booked”. We were stuck with a pair of seats in the center 6 seat section.  Negotiating SFO international was easy, though  we typically fly “TSA PRE”  and don’t have to go through the “shoes off computers out” rigmarole.  Not a problem, but just inconvenient.

A word about Aer Lingus.  They really cram the seats in.  Leg room was barely adequate and obnoxiously short for a very long flight.  Unlike other international flights, wine and beer was not complimentary. One redeeming feature was individual monitors and good movie and music selection.  We suffered through our flight.

Dublin

If I were to judge Dublin on its airport alone, I’d consider it a near 3rd world country.  Plane departure went smoothly and we walked quite some distance before being dumped into a “EURO” and “Non-EURO” security check. Like good little doobies we queued up in the “Non-Euro” section and got nearly to the checkpoint when an attendant who must have noticed our boarding passes sticking out of our passport shouted, “those of you who are connection to another flight must go down that corridor and not go through this checkpoint!”  She was gesturing to a corridor to the left of the point we entered the “EURO, Non-EURO” maze.  We jumped out of line and headed down the correct corridor. We both are experienced flyers and have negotiated numerous airports, but this threw us.

Next up? Another checkpoint were people appeared to be queuing for something.  We figured, OK,, let’s stop and see what’s up with this.  We waited while a couple spend probably five minutes doing something before the man in front of us had his turn.  Again we were saved by an attendant who said, “if you already have your boarding pass, you can skip this and go on”.  We had and we did.

That brought us to the security checkpoint for connecting flights. One line for “EURO” and one for “Non EURO”.  Ok, we went through our passport screening.  The fellow at the counter was friendly, our passports had no issues, and we took five steps.  The line for baggage check was backed up to the security checkpoint.  There were three conveyor belts and only one was operative.  There were three people managing baggage security and another five standing about watching the process. Had it been designed to frustrate passengers, it succeeded.  There was actually a sign posted that said “swearing, shouting at, or fighting with security personal is forbidden”. I let that sink in.

When our turn came up I gathered up the bins necessary for our computers, e-readers, shoes, belts, jackets, phones, and contents of pockets and we guided our belongings through the scanner.  Ellen’s backpack failed the scan first, then mine did as well. They tore Ellen’s bag apart, sent it through the scanner and it failed a second time.  This time EVERYTHING in the bag came out.  Did I mention that Ellen is a fastidious packer?  That means she has things organized in bags within bags of things and optimally crammed into her pack. with a practically empty pack the attendant noticed that two hair clips and a minute pair of insignificant scissors, you might find in a travel sewing kit. The issue was the two clips aligned as such to look like a scissor blade! The now empty pack and a sea of things sailed through the scanner.  My bag was next.  All this time I was trying not to show how annoyed I was becoming by this demonstration of futility.  That sign about not swearing at or fighting with came to mind.  I made eye contact with a security fellow standing maybe 30 feet away and I did not get a good feeling about it. 

The second scan of my bag went relatively smoothly, with to agents discussing its contents a while before an OK was given and I got my bag.  In the meanwhile Ellen was attempting to quickly repack her bag with limited success.

The kicker?  We found our gate number for our leg to Rome,, headed quickly toward it to find a huge congregation of people milling about a closed double door.  The entry to gates B18-B30 was closed.  Why? Nobody knew why, no reason was given.  I asked an attendant at Air Emirates if he had a clew and in that wonderful Irish lilt he said, “I don’t know. It could be fifteen minutes or it could be an hour.”  Ellen and I backtracked to hit the loo and relax a while.  While I was guarding our baggage, three security folks, one woman and two men, walked by making fun of a traveler who was particularly annoyed at having the door closed. Right or wrong, I had the impression that these folks enjoyed inconveniencing passengers and actually wanted to provoke  violence.  It was weird.  Apparently those three had opened the doors; we could access our gate.

Rome

We had priority boarding and emergency seating from Dublin to Rome which was a joy. In Rome we encountered the Italian approach to efficiency.  Four lines to four agents with no indication as to what each line was for. Were they all the same?  No.  “For boarding passes you must talk to that agent”, pointing to another agent and another line.  Boarding pass in hand we went to our gate agent and checked our larger carry-ons.  Again there were three lines and these were marked, though the signs were small and turned away making them moot.  While in line a fellow coming back from Costa Rica struck up a conversation.  Palermo is “his city”.  Time waiting for our flight flew by.  Our flight was held to allow travelers from a late flight from Brazil to make their connection to Palermo.

By the time we had baggage in hand it was 11:30 pm. I called Eurocar which stated their office would be open until midnight.  Ellen headed off to get some food for us and I headed to Europcar.  There was nobody ahead of me when I arrived.  There was nobody at the counter either! I tried calling the local rental site and heard the phone ringing.  `That’s it! By now there were three or four others queuing up behind me.  One fellow asked a neighboring vendor what was up, “He’s parking a car, he’ll be right back”, in gleaned from the Italian I understand (more than I thought I would actually). 

The attendant noticed we plan to drop the car off in Messina. “Yes, we are driving the north shore of Sicily”, said I. He replied, “Then you don’t want the car they assigned you.  Here I can give you a Golf if you want an automatic.”  I immediately asked if he had standard available.  The Italian driver loves a standard transmission and I figured I’d have a better choice.  “Yes, we have a standard Volvo, would you like that? It has a GPS NAV system at $16 euro per day.”  SCORE!

Don Ciccio’s Sea House

 

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The living room looking into the dining room

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Breakfast on the wrap-around porch

It was a bit confusing getting acquainted with the Volvo in the dark and harder finding our way out of the rental car parking lot. Once we knew how (by following another car) it was obvious.  Foreknowledge is a powerful tool.  In the dark it didn’t make sense to try to de-cypher the Italian navigation system.  I enabled cellular data and navigated to Don Ciccio’s Sea House with ease.  I only had to U-turn twice.  Getting out of the car we must have drawn the attention of every dog within a kilometer.  The barking was furious. As usual the GPS got us within about 300 feet but still one house away from our destination. Don Ciccio’s house sits behind a 12 foot wall as does every house along that street. We found and rang the bell.  Some time later a woman’s voice called out, “coming”.  And perhaps five minutes later Francesco appeared, “Do you have a car? Let me open the gate.”  We parked at his direction and found our most entertaining host ready to give us a tour, our keys, a description of the house, a ton of other interesting information, and a half bottle of wine with two glasses. Francesco is a charming individual.

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Wisteria, the garden, and the hills around Palermo

 

We fell into bed around 1AM April 1.