In the afternoon we went to Viterbo: another fairly large and active city, interesting to wander the old streets without too much in mind. I'd located the Parcheggio del Sacrario to park: Waze routed us through a narrow street. On exiting, I missed a turn at the start, and what should have been an easy drive to the main route became a harrowing journey through the city: a narrow arch and difficult turns, and entering Soriano through the unfamiliar side.
On Saturday, it was time to check out. We got the car loaded and took off for Rome Fiumicino airport. We took our chances with the fuel warning light coming on, and filled it at the full service pumps at the usual spot where we do that on the G.R.A. On this gasoline car, the price was a little over €100; it would have been a little less if we were sure the fuel would last to the airport on their refueling option. Hertz was on Level 1 of their garage, as I recall less travel up the ramps than before.
It was time for Emily to go to her flight, and we got the taxi into Rome, to our small B&B Navona Nice Rooms. It's a complex of three rooms on an upper floor, and the small elevator only worked with the staff's key. There was a young earnest staff, and air conditioning and breakfast served in the room, but our coffee preferences were sometimes botched.
I need to mention something else that came up: that word came out of another strike at Barcelona airport affecting Vueling flights. We saw the list of Saturday cancellations on Thursday evening, on Friday there were emails in Spanish that weren't really right, referring to our inbound travel date, but then the Vueling app showed the Monday flight being changed to a Tuesday night flight (useless for connecting to our Monday evening LEVEL flight) and during Friday/Saturday overnight hours the full list including our Monday flight showed with our flight cancelled. I had tried to be proactive earlier with all involved airlines. Iberia, through whom the booking was made, said nothing to do in spite of the Vueling change I was showing. I'd contacted Vueling through Twitter and they indicated they could provide a hotel and arrange the change of LEVEL flight, but it was somewhat unclear how that would happen, with their site indicating Iberia controlled the reservation.
On Saturday morning, with the flight on the cancelled list, I called Iberia for a change and they said they didn't have official notification of the cancellation, to try again after noon. I did that once we were in Rome, and they still didn't have it posted. We asked about a supervisor: one would be available after 6 (noon Miami time). We were starting to wonder if we'd need to take an early morning trip to the airport to show up for a flight we knew to be cancelled, so we wouldn't be counted as no-shows.
Finally in the evening I called and they acknowledged the cancellation. This agent said the best he could do was put us on the same airlines two days later. It was difficult to communicate with him, as I was interested in other Iberia-LEVEL routings that could have still gotten us home Monday, and about European Union rules requiring care during a delay, but all he said was that if we found another way home on our own, we could get a refund, and I wasn't ready to deal with that. We had to remind him that we were on a Premium award, so we could get seats in the Premium cabin, row 3 rather than 1.
So we'll be in Rome for an extra two days and we needed to find other lodging. These days we've eaten at restaurants under our B&B, where we have memories from our high school days, and done more wandering in the area.
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