Terminal disappointment

In the final scene of Love, Actually, hordes of hot, smiling people swathed in flattering lighting and fresh makeup come bouncing off planes into Heathrow, and it makes you think, "Damn, international travel is sexy!"

In Rome, Dublin, London, Singapore, Tokyo, Vancouver, and even Paris, I've never had problems figuring out where I need to go. The arrivals halls are usually well designed, with clear, well placed signs. Passport control (a more civilized term than Immigration) is well managed, except at Charles de Gaulle, where queueing is optional, and agents are usually helpful and courteous. ATMs, restrooms, food, and transportation options within sight.

And then there's JFK.
Compared with other international airports, arriving on an overseas flight at JFK is like being on the Dating Game. When you get to the other side of the wall, it can be highly disappointing. Whenever I come back from somewhere else, I brace myself for unhelpful employees, surly customs agents, and confusing signs. I'm not surprised, but I expect better.

The BA departures hall is all right, but the arrivals hall is dismal. Imagine it's your first time jetting in to New York and you're looking forward to bright lights, big city. Instead you enter what looks like a prison waiting room, or worse, the department of motor vehicles. The waiting area looks like an afterthought. If, like we did, you have to wait over an hour for your party to arrive, there aren't a lot of options. You need bionic vision to figure out where the restrooms are. And let's not even talk about what those are like, shall we? There's little thought given to what people might expect once they arrive. After enduring the trifecta of endurance--Immigration, Baggage Claim, and Customs--you'd think you'd get a cheery welcome. Oh, you get a cheer all right--a Bronx cheer. Sucker!

The only kiosk open when we were there was a Subway. I took a picture of the signs on the soda machine, which exemplified JFK's commitment to quality of service: No Cherry Coke, No Root Beer, No Lem., No Ice T, No Hi-C, No Sprite. NO REFILLS. Only Coke or Diet Coke. You don't want that? Fuhgeddaboudit! Welcome to New Yawk.

Next!

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Bellissima!

On the drive from London to Stansted Airport, the soothing, articulate voice of a BBC Radio 4 announcer read a string of random words that seemed to go on forever: "Viking North Utsire...southeasterly in North Utsire at first, otherwise southwesterly, 5 to 7, perhaps gale 8 later in Viking. Rough or very rough. Rain. moderate or poor...South Utsire...variable 4 becoming southwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6 later. Rough or very rough. Occasional rain. Moderate or good, occasionally poor..."

It was 5:20 a.m. I had already been awake for an hour, but this broadcast was starting to put me to sleep. I looked over at Luis, who was already sleeping. Niamh and Jan were quietly listening as the announcer kept going on as though reading some spy code that only British people seemed to understand. The suspense was killing me.

Breaking the mood, I said, "What the hell are we listening to?"

"Oh, right," Jan said, "it's the Shipping Forecast."

"And what might that be?"

"It's a weather forecast for sailors. It's quite big here."

"Oh, good," I said. "Because I thought I'd had a stroke and had forgotten the English language."

The Shipping Forecast was followed by a report on "Renaissance Mutton," a campaign spearheaded by Prince Charles aimed at reviving interest in dead old sheep. This broadcast confirmed that radio in the UK sucks just as much as in the US. Just as we pulled up at the airport, some Anglican bishop was concluding the Daily Prayer, which was good, because we were about to embark on a Ryanair flight, and I was bracing for the worst.

My fears were unfounded. We made it onto the plane without a hitch, though I was a bit put off by the lack of assigned seating. We ended up sitting across from a dad and his two little "angels," who took turns slapping each other throughout the flight and speaking in tongues.

Ah well. Three hours later, as the plane approached Sant'Egidio Airport in Perugia and I took in the the rich earth tones of Umbria and Tuscany below, my fears dissolved. Rows of stately cypresses, olive groves, and vineyards came into view. Even the pilot's organ-slamming landing couldn't break the smile on my face. Everything about Italy makes me smile. Che bella Italia!

Sant'Egidio is about the size of the waiting room at Penn Station in New York. There are only two arrivals and two departures daily. Even though I was operating on 4 hours' sleep, I was pumped and momentarily forgot I was traveling on my Irish passport. Going through passport control, which was two guys checking passports (one for EU, one for non-EU) I was ushered by a carabiniere to the EU line, which had 4 people.

The four of us piled into our Fiat Punto and took off for the town of Perugia, about a 15-minute drive from the airport. It was cool out, nice enough to sit outside and have a coffee. Perugia is a cute little medieval town, undeserving of its recent bad press as a murder hub and terror school. Five minutes after we arrived I had an unbelievably delicious prosciutto and mozzarella panino, and Perugia is home to Perugina, which hosts the annual Eurochocolate festival. So, how can that be a bad place?

We walked up Corso Vannucci, Perugia's main street. Mixed in among the trendy boutiques and department stores are chains like Timberland. It was hard to tell it was Christmas season. The only decorations on the street were understated strings of white lights shaped like stars and a figure of Babbo Natale (Santa Claus) climbing up the side of a building. How over-the-top extravaganzas like Brooklyn's Dyker Lights made their way across the ocean is head-scratching.

In mid-afternoon we drove toward Città della Pieve, about 30 miles south of Perugia. Italy has had centuries to perfect the art of beauty. Each tree and hill looks as though it was purposefully designed into the landscape, as though artists with imagination willed the pieces into place, every corner and passage placed to cast shadows and reflect light in the most splendid way.

Luis and I had bought a Garmin Nuvi 270 GPS for the trip. After our last trip to Italy in 2003, we learned that deciphering highway signs is not a simple matter. There are no such things as north, south, east, and west. To get anywhere, you have to know which major city you are headed toward. In Tuscany and Umbria, if you don't know where you are relative to Florence and Rome, you could be driving for quite a while. So the GPS came in handy, especially as we got closer to Città della Pieve. Even though we had programmed in the name of the street where Luis's mom lives, the GPS found it in four different locations, and every time we turned the GPS said "Recalculating...Recalculating" because it didn't know what we were trying to do. This was all because of one word: Vocabolo. In Italian, the word vocabolo literally means word, but geographically speaking, it means general area. It's kind of like "I know it's around here somewhere." Luckily, Luis called his mom and told her where we were and she ran to the bottom of the hill and flagged us down.

A few months ago Luis's mom and stepdad rented a property on the outskirts of Città della Pieve. They are planning to retire to the area and are now in the process of getting their residency, looking for a place to buy, and figuring out what to do with their house in the States. I am very jealous.

The property consists of a main house and a casetta (guest house) overlooking a magnificent valley. A big well sits in the middle of the backyard. The flora is mainly cypress, pine, and olive. The hills undulate in the distance, lending the landscape a romantic dreaminess. You feel as though you could stand there forever, watching the light change moment to moment, and never be bored. It's not fair that Italy hoards such beauty.

The beauty, however, is tempered by daily life in Italy. At the house next door, the local telephone company had run a backhoe into the phone lines, cutting service, which won't be restored until 2008 because the outage was not "budgeted." Goods and services are mercilessly taxed. To me these are small prices to pay for the sight of Italian woman dressed in their finest frocks to fetch their daily bread or old Italian men sitting around the cafe reading La Repubblica and exhorting the pigeons to be calm and fly gracefully.


Italy is a siesta culture. Here it is called riposo (rest). Many towns in Tuscany and Umbria rely on agriturismo for economic sustenance. Businesses may open about 9 or 9:30 and close at 2:00, reopen at 4:00 and close again at 6:00 or 7:00. A few years ago while in San Gimignano we learned the hard way just how serious Italians are about their riposo. We arrived at a restaurant (recommended by Lonely Planet, by the way) for lunch at about 1:50. We asked if lunch was still being served and the maitre d' said yes. We were the only patrons, which should have been a tipoff. Next thing we know, we hear pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and the spouting of many epithets. Seconds later, the cook stood in the middle of the restaurant smoking a cigarette and glaring at our table. One of our friends asked what we should do. I said I thought if we stuck around the ashes--or worse--might make their way into our meal, so we quietly got up, explained to the maitre d' that we were a little concerned, and left. We ended up having to eat bad panini at a local bar as penance for interrupting the flow of riposo.

In the evening we wandered into the adorable town of Città della Pieve, which, like most Tuscan towns, is full of passageways, ramps, arches, and stairways. Città is about a quarter mile above sea level, and at dusk the valleys below appear to make the town float. Passing the local church, I heard the strains of a choir singing "Ave Maria," and locals strolled the cobblestoned streets looking in shop windows. At the end of our walk we stopped in the supermarket to buy groceries for dinner. As I've written before, I always love shopping for food in other countries. When I lived in Jakarta for a month many years ago, the highlight of my day was perusing the spice aisles of the local market. On this outing, I was mesmerized by two things: the quantity of tomato products and the variety of Nutella jar sizes.

Luis's mom made a delicious pasta dinner and his stepdad broke out a bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. We were all tired from the long day, but after all I'd seen I realized how important it is to savor the moment. Italians seem to have perfected that art.

In New York, beauty is relative; in Italy, it's absolute.

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Top it off

After chowing down a dozen dubious wings at the airport bar (Luis: "I think this one is made of cat"), we were whisked away to the Upper Class cabin, where the other half really lives.

I looked around to make sure Karen Black wasn't on board. That would have been ominous. Luis was in seat 1K. Where was I? Why, 2K! Right behind the pilot and the lavatory.

The attendants wasted no time in offering us drinks. We both had champagne. "I also took the liberty of putting a bottle of water next to you," the attendant said. Well done.

Clare, the chef, came around to each of us to ask whether we would like to be served breakfast in bed 90 minutes before landing. Why, I couldn't possibly...well, all right then.

Another attendant asked us if we would like to have massages or beauty treatments. I said I would prefer to sleep. Before takeoff yet another attendant came by: "May I make your bed up?" Why, yes you may!

I took something called No-Jet-Lag, a homeopathic remedy consisting of Arnica Montana (the evil twin of Hannah Montana) and several other witches' brew ingredients. I took one every 2 hours, according to the directions. The label warned that consumption of alcohol may impair its effectiveness. Yeah, whatever.

I actually fell asleep for about an hour and a half but was awakened by Wizard-of-Oz-house-pitching turbulence. Luis said later that he thought we were going to die, but at least he'd die happy. I almost never get queasy in turbulence, but this was prolonged, and the alcohol didn't help.

Breakfast was served on schedule, and we landed safely, about 90 minutes later than planned. UK immigration is divided into "Fast Track" (i.e., rich people), "European Union," and "Rest of the World," which is pretty much how the real world divides. Luis went through Fast Track, whilst I used my newly minted Irish passport to speed through the EU line. No stamp, but that's OK.

We took the Tube into Islington, about an hour's ride. It's amusing to hear a calm British female at every stop say, "This is a Piccadilly line train headed in the direction of COCKfosters." I never get tired of that.

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Upper Class travel

A few weeks ago I decided, well, our tickets were so inexpensive, why don't I upgrade our seats from Economy to Premium Economy. The difference? A little more legroom, a little more oxygen. But the travel gods were extra generous, and when dropped off our bags at check-in, we were told the flight was oversold, and we were upgraded to Upper Class. Immediately we were greeted by lovely, chatty attendants, given champagne, and asked if we wanted a massage.

The attendant even asked if I wanted pajamas! Now this is living! After takeoff I'm going to lie down and sleep, and in the morning awaken to croissants and tea.

Our only hope is that this is not the pinnacle of the trip.

A lovely way to start a vacation.

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Adding on the pounds

While relaxing by the pool at Luis's mom's over Labor Day weekend, Luis and I had a brilliant idea: let's avoid the holiday madness and go somewhere to avoid family drama. Several Cosmos later, we had economy tickets to London on Virgin. Granted, they were very cheap (under $300), but that won't make up for our hemorrhagic spending once we land. With the dollar at more than 2 to 1 to the pound, we're leaving plenty of room in our luggage for ramen noodles.

Lodging is not a worry, since we'll be staying with our friends. We decided that our trip was our mutual Christmas present. I plan to go to Dublin for 2 days to do some genealogical research and possibly meet up with some cousins. Two weeks ago hotel and airfare would have cost me about $300, but I waited a week too long and ended up paying $500. The euro is no bargain either.

We thought we might escape family gatherings altogether, but Luis's mom and stepdad are living temporarily near Perugia in Umbria, and what the heck, we'll already be on that side of the ocean. The Brits and Luis and I are going the weekend before New Year's. We'll be within drinking distance of wine regions Montepulciano and Montalcino. Ironically, the wine there will be more expensive than it is here!

The only thing more intimidating than the exchange rate is the prospect of flying from London to Perugia on Ryanair, a low-budget Irish airline that has fewer frills than a Mennonite church. The fares are so inexpensive I'm envisioning a Flinstones-like plane where everyone flaps their arms to make the plane run. I can't seem to find a good word about the airline; their bad-boy image makes Colin Farrell look like St. Patrick. France is in a lawsuit with Ryanair, customer complaints are rampant, and the EU is threatening to shut down its Web site for bogus pricing. Earlier this year, Ryanair unsuccessfully attempted to take over Aer Lingus, the national airline of Ireland, earning it the airline's enmity. I don't know if it's good or bad that I share the same last name as the airline's president. It will be anyone's guess whether we'll actually make it to Italy. I feel an I Love Lucy episode coming on.

Having said all this, I'm very excited about the trip. I haven't had a vacation since my last trip to London in March, and that was a trip to remember. At least I'll have stories to tell about this one. And if worse comes to worst, I have plenty of healthy organs to sell when the bills start coming in.

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The road rose up to meet me

When I was a wee lad my parents showed me a brochure from Aer Lingus that gave bios of various Irish saints, among them St. Kieran. Aer Lingus had just unveiled its first fleet of Boeing 720s and named them after Irish saints, as they still do today. That, and my mother's corned beef and cabbage, was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Irish culture. And yet, only one generation stood between me and the motherland. Dad's parents were "right off the boat," arriving a mere 30 years before I was born. Dad met mom while working as an Aer Lingus reservations agent. He was the black sheep of his family, and I never knew whether he wasn't interested in his heritage or whether his strained relationship with his abusive father estranged him. Aside from my family, the only Irish people I knew were my friends Jimmy and Mary Lee, new arrivals from Limerick with brogues and scrappy demeanors. Being Irish meant witnessing my father's hazy drunks and enduring the pungent odor of cheap, stale beer in the dark corners of the local pub.

My cousins Joanie and Denise were Irish stepdancers, and for a few summers I watched them dance at feisanna in East Durham. My aunt and uncle were charter members of their local AOH, and family gatherings often involved a wistful rendition of "Danny Boy." One of my aunts would usually go on about the anti-Papist laws, but I just thought she was crazy. I was American, through and through, and no one was trying to stop me from being Catholic. While my cousins were off spending their summers in Ireland with our relatives, my exposure to Irish culture consisted of eating Irish sodabread made by my Scottish grandmother.

I saw my dad's side of the family fairly often as a child. We lived in Brooklyn, and the rest of the family lived in Astoria and on Long Island. Summers I spent at my cousins' sprawling ranch house in Deer Park, where I learned how to ride a bike and breathed more easily away from the city and the family. At least once a month we had Sunday dinner at my grandparents' apartment in Long Island City. They were of the lace-curtain variety, certainly not the shanty variety--a distinction I would later discover is razor-thin.

Dad's mom died in 1980 of complications from arteriosclerosis, before anyone knew it as Alzheimer's, and Grandpa died 7 years later. By that time I had moved away to DC, partly to get away from my family, particularly my dad. I was terrified of ending up a repressed, belligerent drunk like him, so I became a teetotaler.

But as I came to learn, as much as you fight against the things you hate, you somehow end up being drawn to them. I didn't become a drinker, but I did like to fight. It must have been innate, because gay boys are not supposed to like fighting. I gave up Catholicism and embraced boxing as my religion. It didn't occur to me that I was following a long line of Irish boxers. Irishness was never in my consciousness. I just knew I liked it.

The year before Grandpa died he began losing his battle with emphysema. We all knew he had little time to live. My aunts and uncles organized a family reunion in a public park in Sunnyside, Queens. It's one of the few times we were all together, my grandfather, his five kids, and their fifteen kids, in one place. I came up from Washington, in the middle of summer, to see my aunts and uncles and cousins. In the pecking order of cousins, I'm number 5. I had fun, but I wasn't quite sure I fit in with them. For one thing, there was lots of drinking, which made me uncomfortable, and talk of sports, which, as a newly minted out homo didn't interest me. There was talk of trips to Ireland and Irish music and dance, and the bombs in Northern Ireland and the bloody Protestants. I remember someone talking about Irish performer Carmel Quinn, who I thought was cheesy. I didn't identify with anything Irish. Being Irish was quaint and backwards. It was leprechauns and green beer and four-leaf clovers. Now, when I think back on it, it's ironic: I was a foreign language major interested in every culture but my own.

After Grandpa died, I lost touch with dad's family. Grandpa was the glue that kept us all together. My cousins, who lived towns apart in Long Island, saw each other regularly. E-mail and cell phones were not common in the 1990s, so contact was sporadic at best. And there was one more thing: I was afraid to tell them I was gay.

Every year the family held a reunion, mostly in Long Island, but I never went. The next one I attended was in the mid-1990s. Many of my cousins had married and started having kids of their own. They owned houses and swimming pools and cars. I was still living in Virginia and renting a house. My "secret" still kept me at bay. During the reunion that year I confided in my cousin Joanie. "I was wondering when you were going to say something," she said. Turns out everyone in the family knew, had known for years, and it just wasn't an issue. It made me realize that fear is largely a figment of our fertile minds.

When dad died 7 years ago, it liberated me. No longer would I witness his bloated dramatic performances at family functions. I could be myself, on my own terms. Through the years, every alcoholic in the family had sobered up and stayed that way. My cousins were adults with interesting lives and families.

For years Luis tried to persuade me to apply for Irish citizenship, and I paid it lip service. When I finally decided to do it, I started talking to my dad's family to find out if anyone had done it. Some of them had thought about it but no one had actually applied. I decided to try, but I realized I didn't even know where by grandfather had been born. As it turned out, no one else knew for sure either. When I applied for his birth record from Ireland, the seed had been planted: I realized that I knew only a watered down version of Ireland. I wanted to know where I came from. A big driver was the realization that I am the end of my line. If I couldn't leave a child, at least I could leave the legacy of the family history.

I started reading Irish history, learning the Irish language, and applying for citizenship. I took my first trip to Ireland, became a member of the Irish Arts Center and the Irish Repertory Theater. I built my family tree and have now gone back almost six generations on both sides. (Oh, and I love the Guinness.) Plastic Paddy though I may be, I don't consider myself any more Irish than I was growing up. I just have a different perspective. I still find it ironic that I am descended from a long line of dairy farmers and I'm mildly lactose intolerant.

This year I went to my family reunion on Long Island. I hadn't gone in 4 years, as I'd had other plans when the reunion was held. My cousin PJ proudly announced that his daughter Julia is a world-ranked Irish stepdancer. My cousin Tommy told us stories of visiting our great-grandmother when he was a kid. I showed my aunts the family tree; Aunt Helen, my best source of family information, said she was so thankful that I had done this. I showed off my new Irish passport, which I will christen on our trip to London in December. Now all my cousins want to get theirs.

At the end of the day, PJ gathered us all in his basement to watch Julia perform a few Irish stepdances for us. I watched her raptly, feeling a tear come to my eye, and was glad for the journey I had made.

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Flying like an eagle above turkeys

In the past 3 years I have flown almost 30,000 miles on a bunch of different airlines. I'm on my way to Vancouver and will have flown another 5,000 miles upon my return. You'd think I'd have a nice stash of frequent flyer miles by now. But I don't.

I always forget to enroll in mileage programs, and when I do I can never figure out how to claim my miles, or else I can't find my e-ticket or boarding pass. On my latest trip to London, though, I was determined to claim the miles. I went online and tried to join the BA Executive Club. I input my ticket number and got an error message saying it was not a qualifying flight. I surmised that the ticket number was not valid because my flight had been canceled and I had to fly out the next day.

"You're gonna have to make a phone call," Luis said. Luis knows how much I hate dealing with anyone in customer service. Online is the only way for me. I was so happy a few years ago, when I owned a car, that I was able to get an insurance quote online without having to talk to anyone. But this time, I couldn't get mileage credit online. So I called British Airways. It appears that British Airways doesn't want to talk to me, either. While on hold, a lovely British voice politely informed me that I could do just about anything on the company's Web site. If you insist on waiting, the message implied, we will keep you on hold until an American Southern black woman answers the call. And that's just what happened.

After explaining that I had, indeed, gone to the BA.com Web site and tried repeatedly, and in different ways, and at different times, to input my ticket number, I always got an error message saying mine was not a "qualifying" flight. Maybe the flight cancellation had something to do with it, I offered. No, the agent said, it was because my economy-class flight was not eligible for points.

I told her I was still confused. "Well, your flight was H class," she said. "To qualify, it has to be higher."

"Can you explain what that means?" I asked.

She talked about different classes of letters, none of which meant anything to me. Hopeful, I said that my original flight was H class, but that I was upgraded to J class and wasn't that higher than H? "Oh no," she said, "You get points only if you paid for it." Great. Cancel my non-qualifying flight, then tell me I get nothing.

Finally, I got to the ugly truth: there was only way to claim the miles. Within 90 days after taking this last trip, I'll need to book a flight in a higher class, then call British Airways and enroll in the Executive Club. Then I can retroactively claim the miles from the previous flight. However, because I would be at the "blue" tier level, I could claim only a third of the points, or 865 miles out of a possible 2595.

I got such a headache from trying to figure out how any of this was a benefit, I decided my strategy of "online or nothing" was the best one for me.

However, this strategy does have its drawbacks.

I'm flying to Vancouver on Air Canada through United. United sent me an e-ticket with a confirmation number within seconds after I booked. In the e-ticket was a link to Easy Check-in Online. So, the day before my flight I clicked on the link and went to the United site to check in. I got an error message that my flight did not qualify for Easy Check-in Online because I was flying on a partner airline and I needed to go to the operating carrier's site to check in.

So off I went to the Air Canada site. First off, I got an unsupport browser error message. I usually ignore these messages because Safari, which I use, can handle most things. So I clicked on the check-in from selected U.S. airports option, and to my surprise, New York JFK, my departure airport, was not on the list, but New York Laguardia and New York Newark were.

I knew that I could check in at a kiosk at JFK, but my flight was so early (7:20 a.m.) I didn't want to take any chances, especially since I was uncaffeinated. But I did easily check in at kiosk, somehow bypassed the giant line of people who had not checked themselves in beforehand, and got my bag dropped off in about 10 minutes and whisked through security with an hour to spare.

Even after suffering the indignity of having to pay for my food on the flight, I forgot all about unclaimed miles and bad Web navigation as the plane and I drifted off to somewhere else.

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