Welcome to Rome!

On December 27, 1999, we left Detroit Metropolitan Airport headed for Rome. On board I was decked out in some comfortable travel duds.
I was wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and hiking boots. On board my carry on had the usual assortment of necessities - basic toiletries and one basic change.
Travel comfortably and basically. That's the way to go.
We settled in for the overnight flight - dinner (and drinks, of course!) and then snooze or watch some sort of movie if you must. And then breakfast and the usual formalities for entering a foreign land - filling out the customs forms.
Smooth landing - Da Vinci Airport, Rome!
Morning, December 28, 1999.
The schedule for the day was easy enough.
Our guide would soon meet us, help us with baggage claim and then through customs. Board the bus and take a little drive around town. I have come to suspect that this little drive around - aka "City Tour" - is actually a time killer to allow the hotel staff to get the necessary rooms ready for the incoming occupants.
Anyhow, there we were at the baggage claim.
And the tour guide was there and ready to assist with claiming our bags.
Of course we did have to go through customs with our own luggage but once through a porter would be on the ready to set our bags on a cart and wheel them to our bus.
And so it began.
One by one voices could be heard, "That's my bag!" "That one is mine!"
And little by little the luggage selection dwindled.
And as for me, well, instead of proclaiming, "That one is mine," I could be heard increasingly declaring, "Where is mine?"
End of the line.
And mine is nowhere to be found.
Fortunately our guide was there to assist. He escorted me to a special desk where he was able to explain to the attendant that my luggage seems to have gone missing.
She asked for a description of the bag and I did thew best I could. Then she pulled out some pages of luggage illustrations asking me to identify the one that looked closest to my missing piece. It was almost like reviewing a police lineup, but there it was.
An almost exact spitting image.
Luggage looks declared, the attendant turned to her computer and began some clicking and typing.
It was amazingly only moments before shed declared, "It has gone to Amsterdam!"
So here I was in Rome and there my luggage was en route to Amsterdam.
But do not worry, I was assured. It will soon be on its way back to you and you will have it, perhaps even by the end of the day today.
So off we went to enjoy the rest of the day and begin our pilgrimage.
And off went my luggage with my formal clerical blacks, black dress shoes and all, everything prim and proper for a pilgrimage in Rome.
Only it was headed to Amsterdam.
And I was in The Eternal City with my jeans and sweatshirt and hiking boots!
My dream trip of the Millennium had begun!


(And, yes, there will be more!)