Dovster

Stimpy, two warnings about Venice:

1. Do not confuse Venice in the summer with Venice in November. You are about to visit a city jammed with tourists. You will face long lines to all tourist sites and water busses crowded like sardine cans. You may well never want to return, but November will be a completely different story.

2. The Ai Mori is a particularly unimpressive hotel both from the outside and on the main floor. Don't be turned off. Ask if you can look at the rooms -- especially the superior rooms we will be getting. They are magnificant. The hotel also has "mini-lobbies" on each floor where people from three or four adjacent rooms can sit.

dedehans

You will need a second shot of bourbon to ease the pain when you see "il conto" for the first shot.........better to stick to wine.......or byo in tote

Traveller

Does the cute mouse count?

Dovster

Of course Mighty Mouse counts -- but what does he have to do with the Orlando area?

Wait! You don't mean -- shudder -- that other mouse?

Mickey (or as he is known in Italy, "Topolino") is simply not classy enough for a place like the Ai Mori. He is a perv -- everybody knows that.

Thanks to O2K's influence, the Ai Mori has agreed to waive its usual strict anti-perv policy and allow me to stay there, but do we really want to push things with them?

Donald, of course, is always more than welcome. Especially if he brings his own orange sauce.

stimpy

Yeah, you gotta figure any Italian city will be jammed in July. But I wonder? I had no problem booking rooms with points in both Rome and Venice. In Rome, both Starwood and Intercontinental seem to have plenty of inventory. And the really interesting thing is that in both cities they say this is LOW season! So I'm not even burning many points.

Maybe the hordes are going elsewhere this summer?

Cholula

I would suggest they are going to ATH for the Olympics but their advance bookings are waaaaay down as well.
Maybe it's a terrorist thing and people are avoiding Europe this summer....

Dovster

Now you guys are getting me scared about travelling to Europe. I sure am happy that I live in a safe country.

monitor

Of course it's low season because all of the locals are on vacation and have blown the city. There is nobody coming in on business so the kind of hotels that you are talking about are not very busy, despite the huge influx of tourists. Tourists generally are budget conscious and don't have millions of Starwood, etc. points like you do and tend to stay in places that we have never even heard of.

However, they all come out of the woodwork during the day and have formed huge, immovable, and unpleasant crowds wherever you want to go after you have finished your champagne breakfast at the Danieli or Gritti Palace. They have munched dayolds with a bottle of water for breakfast and have left their unpleasant surroundings very early in the morning deliberately to do the city, which translates to being in your way when the limo (or gondola, as the case may be) drops you off.

As you will begin to realize, you are traveling on a different planet from the tourists who annually turn places like Venice and Florence into reasonable facsimiles of Disneyland.

Dovster

This is very similar to the experience I had during the PBI-FLL Meet.

The Boca Raton Marriott was jammed with hordes of the Great Unwashed. Cholula, Canarsie, Indufan, DLFan, MsEverywhere, Traveller, and numerous others scarfed up its bargain-priced, lice-infested, rooms and periodically emerged to form huge, immovable, and unpleasant crowds.

I, on the other hand, treated myself to the pleasures of the Ramada Inn, and like the other elite who stayed there, was able to spoil myself with gourmet meals at its on-site Denny's.

SanDiego1K

Serious thread? Not!!

Cholula

I'm not one prone to platitudes or overstatement but I do have to say that the above quote is among the most outrageous I have yet seen on FT!!!!
None of the words strung together in the bolded portion have any relationship to each other.
At best, Dovster's statement is an insult to any FT'er with a sense of class and style.
At worst, it may well be a crime against nature.

monitor

So let's bring this thread back from the absurd to the serious and now observe in today's news that the EC appears to be approving of the Italian government's latest plan to bail out Alitalia.
Therefore, instead of Alitalia being forced to close its doors sometime in September, there is an extension given to allow for more privatization. To me, this means that by November, when we intend to try to use it on award tickets, it will be deep into labor strife engendered by furious attempts at cost cutting.
Therefore, I am going to need to make my schedule even more flexible, anticipating strikes and slowdowns by one AZ worker's group or another.
Worst case is being stuck in Rome for a few extra days but I suggest that everybody take advantage of MsEverywhere's discount on Delta. What I'm doing on AZ is something of a gamble.

Dovster

Monitor, you may be right but it what you are describing is not the usual Italian unions' method of dealing Alitalia disputes.

They don't want to cause problems for Alitalia (as they know that the more they strike it, the more people will go to other airlines.) They want to cause problems for the government.

What they usually do is not hit Alitalia but hit the airports instead. This closes down EVERYBODY'S flights.

Most of the time, these are 1 day strikes, often announced a week or two in advance.

Dorlee

O2K suggested that I try for award tickets from Air France, and I was able to reserve business class seats from ATL to VCE. I would like to know if they are comfortable enough for sleeping.

Air France's web site shows a picture of the business seats and they appear to recline and have a foot rest similar to DL.

By the way, Leonard & I were able to join O2K & Dr. O2K for dinner last week in Brentwood. These two know great food!! Can't wait for their restaurant recommendations in VCE.

belle3388

This is great news! Is the connection via JFK or CDG? Hubby and I flew AF Biz last month from CDG to ATL, and the configuration was 2 3 2. If not already done so, please call AF asap for a seat assignment, and request window/aisle. We weren't so lucky, the flight was full, hubby got the middle seat and he had to 'deal with it'.

However, if you could spare 10,000 more miles per person and is available, First Class is way much better.