Long story short, today was a travelling day. We had to drive, take a train, take another train (one is never enough), take a plane and take a cab. Enriched by our experience from the previous day we decided to build as much buffer in our plan as we could. This meant a 6:50 start on the day.
Our host was kind enough to let us have breakfast at 7:50. We had asked for 7:45 to give us 15 minutes to eat before hitting the road at 8:00 sharp. Apparently, 7:45 was too early and he could do no earlier than 7:50 (regular breakfast hours being from 8:00 to 10:00). In any case we had little hope for a B&B breakfast in a country where breakfast is an afterthought but boy were we surprised to find eggs, fruits, cold cuts, cheese, cakes, tarts, bread and jams, espresso: a superb breakfast buffet, all handmade by the lady of the house. No wonder our host didn't want to move the time up; setting up the buffet must take a while.
We took off from Saturnia around 8:10, a little after our planned departure time but still within our buffer. It’s an hour's drive to Grosseto, where we had to drop our car. Our train departed from Grosseto station at 10:25, leaving us a little more than an hour to complete the return-of-the-car ritual and make the 10-minute walk to the station.
We arrived at the car rental exactly an hour after leaving Saturnia, despite having to double back a couple of times in the city because we got confused by a couple of roundabout exits (Grosseto has many, many roundabouts, and not all of them are round). Returning the car went much more smoothly than getting it in the first place. In the latter, we had to show all sorts of ID, promise to take care of the car as if it were our own infant and inspect it as if it were made of precious metal. The return ceremony consisted of checking the odometer and the gas level and signing off on the final bill. We had planned for half an hour, and we were out of there within ten minutes.
We made our way to the train station, had a nice coffee on a terrace (not the nicest of places, but the coffee was good, the sun was warm, and we had the time) and boarded our train, which was about 18 minutes late.
The TGV, with priority on the tracks, even managed to make up some of the lost time and drop us off at Roma Termini only ten minutes late. We now had three hours to have lunch, make our way back to the station, and catch one of the Leonardo Express trains to the airport. I’ll spare you the suspense and tell you we made it with an hour to spare. Since we already found a little out-of-the-way Pizza place about ten minutes from the station, we arrived at an almost empty restaurant, got our pizza and ate within a little over an hour (breaking Italian restaurant speed records, I’m sure, but nobody felt rushed, and we do eat fast).
As experienced flyers, we planned ahead and paid for access to the rapid security line and the Alitalia lounge. It added about 100€ to the cost of our air travel (50€ each). Still, it allowed us to clear security in a little over 5 minutes, less if we hadn't had to explain to the security agent assigned to the fast lane that, yes, you can purchase access to the lane even if one is flying economy—made it to the lounge almost an hour ahead of our plan. Found a good sofa, drank and ate a little; overall, relaxed waiting for our flight to Palermo.
An hour before our departure, we walked to our gate (they board 45 minutes before departure, and the B gates are about a 10-minute walk from the airline lounge near the D gates). It brought us fond memories of our previous air travel in Italy, where boarding is a chaotic affair. If you’re studying chaos theory, I’m sure you could apply some of what you’d learned to how boarding works here. In any case, we got on the plane as part of the first bus (yup, to cut costs for a short flight, Alitalia leases remote gates). Being in the first batch on board allowed us to stow our luggage in the overhead bins instead of under the seat in front of us. In this particular case, it wouldn't have mattered much as the seat in front of us was about 4 feet away. When booking an exit-row seat, I expected a little legroom for my 1,9 meter frame. Well, I did get more than expected. The short 1-hour flight from Rome to Palermo was made in total comfort for me.
As we entered Palermo, we realized how fragmented our memory of the place was. We came here about 6 years ago, but could not remember how we made it into town, what we did there exactly, or how we left it. We did remember some part of the experience, like some streets we walked, the stop we made at the botanical garden and that the roads are chaotic, still enough for us to remember that we’re no longer in the relatively clean and straight northern Italy but in the unpredictable and scruffy south of Italy. Fun!