I know this is a well traveled route, and not a premium class experience, but I'll share my story anyway.

I was never sure if the AF NYC-Rome was truly a fat-fingered mistake fare, or just a cheap deal, but nevertheless, we jumped on it. We booked the red eye for Thanksgiving night, thinking it would be dead, and with the same mindset, we could score cheap tickets from SFO-NYC on Thanksgiving Day.

Then we found a ton of Continental award availability for Wed before Thanksgiving. We snagged a pair of SFO-EWR, and even treated ourselves to first class on the outbound. We'd heard that as far as domestic first goes, Continental is pretty good. And it was. We had a really nice lunch (hot nuts, shrimp and crab cocktail, halibut/pasta for entrees, and awesome ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Hot fudge. Yes. Strawberries. Yes. Whipped cream. Yes. Nuts. Yes.

The only "not so premium" moment came courtesy of the teenage girl, sitting with her mother in row 1, who hurled two pretty loud f-bombs at Mom just before takeoff. Two "shut the F up"s echoed throughout the first class cabin, and not the "oh my god, no way!" connotation, but definitely a more raw version of "would you please mind your own business, mother?" It was pretty shocking. Fortunately for us, they decided not to speak to each other for the rest of the flight. Still, it was kind of creepy to watch how polite the girl was to the flight attendant later, during the meal service, after being so horribly rude to her mother. Although Mom clearly needed to grow a pair. Who lets their kids speak to them that way?

Though this little incident happened within the span of a minute, it was far more entertaining than Hairspray, the inflight movie. Even without volume, and only occasionally glancing up at it, I was irritated. I'll take Divine, Debbie Harry and Rikki Lake anyday.

Anyway, in hindsight, using miles probably wasn't the smartest move, since we saw $300 SFO-EWR tickets available for wednesday, just a few days before thanksgiving. But those prices weren't around when we booked the AF deal, and we didn't want to leave things to chance. And we were happy to try domestic first on Continental. It was worth it.

So after a fabulous day and a half in NYC including a short peek at the Macy's T-day parade close up...

(note: Dora the Explorer does NOT look good upclose and personal. in fact, all those balloon characters are kind of wrinkled and ratty looking. I guess there's a reason that Cybill Shepherd and Barbara Walters put pantyhose over the lens. Television really CAN make things look better.)

and a delicious thanksgiving dinner at Prune, an awesome little place in the Lower East Side, we headed out to JFK, for our AF adventure.

JFK-CDG. Flight was packed! Who knew?? But they did follow proper boarding procedures, so our NW Silver actually got us on board early. I scored a last minute exit row. My partner kept his window seat. The service in coach was so-so. Dinner, however, was atrocious, and I'm not a particularly snobby eater. The salmon in pasta was so over done -- my friend who flew the same flight the night before, said it perfectly - "it was like a salmon crumble." So gross. It inspired me to skip breakfast and sleep just a little longer.

CDG-FCO. The Paris terminal is beautiful. At least the part we saw. 2F, i think. This short connection was also our first chance to experience how weak our dollar is. $8 capuccino anyone? Each purchase thereafter was like a tiny dagger. But what can you do? And it was the airport, which is markup city.

Alitilia did not follow proper boarding procedure, so it was a mad dash to the plane. Stepping onboard, I realized just how committed the airline is to their brand color. The cabin was like an explosion of green. It made me wonder what Aer Lingus' color scheme is. Anybody?

Rome. What a great city. Like Amsterdam, it's one of those places you just want to start walking, and keep walking. So we did. We also skipped the hotel route, and rented an apartment through a website called Holiday Velvet. (Love that name.) The apt was called "3 Coins Terrace", kind of corny sounding, and not sure what the third coin is for, but it didn't matter. The apt. was a block from the Trevi fountain, top floor, with a lift, and a huge terrace. Great location and value. Having breakfasts in, and lunches packed up saved us a ton. plus, we got to go to the italian supermarkets and feel like locals. well, locals who butchered the language and just said gratzi a lot.

The return from Rome offered a little more adventure. Since we weren't staying at a hotel and didn't know Rome, we had opted for the 40 Euro taxi into Rome, instead of the cheaper train. And since we wanted to maximize every last minute of our last day, we decided to taxi out as well. Half way to the airport, our driver said his car was overheating and so he pulled over. I suddenly felt like we were on the Amazing Race. Flat tires and car trouble always seem to happen on that show. Anyway, our driver miraculously exits from the road, right in front of a Sheraton, with a long line of taxis. Coincidence? Hmm. It didn't seem like the car was overheating, but he was quick to transfer our bags to another taxi waiting. We were a little stressed, since we were down to our last Euros and thought we were gonna end up paying more in total with this second cab, but we lucked out. the two cabs ended up being about 40 euro total, including tip. so we might have even saved a few bucks somehow.

okay, I'll try and shorthand this part. Dropped off at Terminal B for int'l flights. Air France desk guy says even though we are flying internationally, we have to check in at Terminal A, because of the specific flight we were on. If we were on a flight 30 minutes later, it would have been Terminal B. Right. Whatever you say. Fortunately, Terminal A was not far. At Terminal A, we discover our flight to CDG has been cancelled. The Alitalia agent is vague, doesn't really explain why the flight is cancelled, and doesn't seem concerned about our 2 hr connection in Paris being shaved down to 55 minutes. Obviously, the woman doesn't read Flyer Talk.

Back at Terminal B, we talk to the same Air France guy about the cancelled Alitalia flight and doesn't he know what's up, why it's cancelled, etc. He says that his system doesn't really talk to theirs. And all I can think is, you guys really are a Sky Team.

the other slightly scary aspect of this is that even though our new flight's boarding pass had a gate number and time on it, it didn't appear on any monitors for a good hour. By the time we left, we were about 30 minutes late. Instead of acknowledging the delay, the flight attendant just offered generic gushing about how excited they were to serve us, etc. Meanwhile, we mentally prepared ourselves for missing our CDG-JFK flight, and wondered if we'd stay at a Paris airport hotel, go into Paris, and ultimately, who'd pay for it all. We pondered all this surrounded by the large group of excited Japanese teenagers who were also on our flight, no doubt on some school trip. Though it's been about 13 years since I lived in Japan and my nihongo is super rusty, i think i can say with certainty that no one was dropping any f-bombs to their elders on that flight.

I have to give Alitalia credit, for both smooth landings, and expedient taxi-ing. They got us to the gate in a snap, and despite the bus ride, a slew of long mysterious corridors, immigration/passport control, a trip back through security, and an air train to our gate, we made it there with time to spare.

And then discovered our CDG-JFK flight was 30 minutes late. No big deal.

What I didn't know, and this was a slightly bigger deal, was that they had swapped planes for some reason, and so not only did our delay grow into an hour and a half, but the new seat configuration meant that my partner and i were not in one of the few two-seat rows at the end of a section, but that it was actually a three-seat row, so i now had a MIDDLE seat. i pleaded my case to the flight attendant, who was very gracious and at 6'4", understood my reasons for wanting an aisle. There was a lot of seat dealing happening on this flight, so i thought i might luck out. There was the couple with THREE kids who were scattered all over the plane and trying to get everyone closer, (they seemed very nice, but talked across the cabin like they were in their living room. i got the feeling they did this wherever they were in public.) Then there was the old lady in front of me who wanted her friend in back to join her, although the friend was in a middle seat as well, and then there were the big LOSERS in my book: the young couple who both had middle seats, but instead of waiting to ask someone to swap, just took the seats they wanted, and then gave the woman who the seat belonged to, that stupid "aw shucks, would you mind..." story when she showed up. Anyway, the woman was having NONE of it. She was polite, and said she'd just had knee surgery, and needed to be able to stretch, although I kind of wish she'd just said "get your butt out of my seat, and next time, don't be so presumptuous." Anyway, I was unsuccessful in swapping out of my middle seat, but I survived. The guy who had the aisle was a frequent Air France traveler. I said we should just ask the attendant to bump him up to Business, which was half empty, but he said they are very strict about upgrading, and said they were a very profitable airline, in part because of that. Then he started to talk about the amazing food they serve. I could only assume he was talking about first class, because I just kept thinking about my salmon crumble. Although I will say, the coconut curry chicken dinner on the return flight was a marked improvement.

I won't bore you with the rest. The E train into Manhattan. A sleepy morning in NYC. A quick drink with a FTer friend. And another late flight. This time, by Continental. Our EWR-SFO was two hours late in departing. Something about the jetway not wanting to detach itself from the airplane. like a little kid too young to know about f-bombs, clinging to his mother's leg. Don't go.

But eventually, we did.