Thursday 29 August 2013

Confessions of a conference attendee

Day 2: 24th August (posted retrospectively!)

The day started nice and early with the bang of the corridor door at 6 am. The joys of airport hotels. Still it was a good alarm clock. All went well with my travel up to arrival in Rome (though annoyingly in Paris – I flew Air France via Paris – I saw there was a flight to Florence leaving at the same time as my flight to Rome, can’t think why it didn’t come up when I was looking for flights unless it was already fully booked, full to bursting with happy geochemists off conferencing). After arrival in Rome airport it was always going to be tight getting to the Florence train – I’d left myself 2 hours – and unfortunately it was too tight. The trains from the airport to my station in Rome were every 30 minutes, not every 15 minute as I’d read and what is more my train was 20 minutes late. In consequence I missed the Florence train by 5 minutes. Still it wasn’t like the 2 km sprint I once had to do in a Mexican airport to catch a connection and the matter was soon resolved by the purchase of a ticket for the next train. To prove that all clouds have a silver lining, I now had time to get something to eat in Rome.

I’m now on the train to Florence, due to arrive 2217. The hotel is near the station. Nonetheless it has been a long day and I’m looking forward to a lie in tomorrow before exploring Florence and then registering at the conference later in the day.

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