Part 3: Rome Fiumicino Airport (FCO) and the Casa Alitalia business class lounge
As I still had some work to finish today before flying to Riyadh, I decided to check out early, head to the airport, and work from the lounge. I hopped into a metro to Termini station, where I bought a ticket for the overcrowded Leonardo Express to Fiumicino Airport.
Even though my flight departed from Terminal 3, my first port of call was Terminal 1 as I wanted to check out Alitalia's landside lounge. Terminal 1 was massively crowded – and it seemed like half the people there were Americans going/coming from a cruise in the Med.
The lounge dragon was asking in shock why I came to her lounge and did not go to the vastly superior Casa Alitalia lounge in T3. I explained her I had only one single reason: to try the flight simulator in the lounge, of which I have read great stories. Unfortunately, the friendly lady told me that Alitalia recently removed the flight simulator from the lounge, but if I wanted I was more than welcome to grab a quick coffee at her lounge before heading to T3. Which was exactly what I did. The lounge has bad seating without any privacy, zero charm, was quite crowded, had no food buffet, but it did have a bar which also had some pastries. I grabbed an espresso and a croissant and sent out the first of the emails I still had to prepare today for work.
From T1 it is a short five minute walk to T3. You just exit the terminal, walk to the right on the pavement, and before you realise it you have reached T3. Compared to the old and dark surroundings of T1, Terminal 3 is actually quite nice looking. Crowds however were again massive landside, I was happy I did not have to check in any bags or zigzag around the hordes of tourists.
To my surprise, the queue at security was short. There was a dedicated priority line which I could use – but I realised halfway that it would have been slightly faster if I would have taken the normal queue as priority only had one luggage scanning machine open as opposed to the fast-moving normal queue which had at least eight or ten. Passport control went fast too. Once airside, T3 is basically a giant shopping centre.
On this occasion, I did not make the same mistake as I did during my
previous trip by going to the small and uninspiring Alitalia lounge built in some kind of broom cabinet. I was happy I found the proper Alitalia flagship lounge this time in the maze of shops.
When entering the lounge, you immediately see it indeed feels very fresh and shiny being just a few months old.
Even though it was quite crowded in the beginning of the morning, there were plenty of seats in the lounge and enough remained available. Most seats were fitted with sockets next to it. There were also plenty of tables next to the buffet for those who preferred to sit down properly to eat. I wished however there were some more private areas to escape all the crowds and sounds, for example by partitioning some seating areas off and thus creating several smaller areas. Although that said, I did like the vibe in the lounge. And even though there were no tarmac views it all felt very bright and open.
Even though the buffet area has a few fridges with water bottles and sodas, most of the drinks you have to get at the manned bar. Needlessly to say, the baristas do make great coffee – but can do whatever mixer or cocktail too. As I was flying to Saudi Arabia, I figured I should get the best out of my lounge experience in case the flights would disappoint. Naturally, I ordered a glass of sparkling wine to begin the fun with. The Villa Sandi prosecco is perfectly drinkable, but it was a pity to see Alitalia downgraded their in-house bubbles as just two months earlier they were only serving Ferrari – which I liked better.
At the time I entered, the breakfast spread at the buffet area in the middle of the lounge was just being replaced with a lunch spread. The food looked yummy and fresh, and true to the style of the lounge featured plenty of Italian culinary mainstays. There is a semi-open kitchen in the back of the lounge where you can see staffers preparing pizzas in special pizza ovens, which were brought out one by one to the buffet when ready.
I wasn't really hungry, so I just took a slice of pizza for testing purposes. It did indeed taste great. I washed it away with an aperol spritz from the bar.
The lounge has nice bathroom facilities too, which are kept spotlessly clean the entire time. There are also a couple of shower rooms – but I did not make any use of them now on the outbound as I already showered before leaving the hotel in the morning.
When I finally finished my work, I grabbed a stool at the bar to chat a bit with the barkeep and a few other random punters at the bar. I might have had two glasses of red wine and some delicious sweets as well.
In short: The Casa Alitalia Lounge is not one of the best in the world, but for sure among the better business class lounges in Europe. Seating is meh, but food quality is great and the manned bar is great for coffee and a pre-flight aperol spritz.
Next up: Flying Saudia in business class from Rome to Riyadh