We’re late, we’re late, for a very important date! 9, July 2009

We are always late when we are going places here in Italy.

We are late for reservations we make.  Sometimes by 15 minutes, sometimes by an hour.

We were an hour late for my appointment to choose a dress.  The store called to say that if we weren’t there in 20 minutes, we would have to come a different day.  They had another client.  Fabio got upset by this!  He thought they shouldn’t have taken another client, because that wouldn’t give us enough time.  However, I pointed out, if we had arrived on time, we woud have had more than an hour to try dresses.

Last night, we had a restaurant reservation for 8:00.  We left the house at 8:10, and arrived at the restaurant aroud 8:30.  The couple who owned the pizzeria was happy to see us, and they seemed they could have cared less that we were running late.

I am under the impression that the MOA in Italy is to be late.  Maybe the hour we were late for the dress store was too much. But it is telling that they only called when we were actually an hour late, not 15 minutes late or a half hour late.

Last time I was here, we were late for our plane. The plane from Rome to Chicago.  Take off was at 9:00 a.m.  We left the house at 6:30 a.m. Without traffic, Fabio’s house is 45 minutes from Rome’s airport.  But if you thought traffic in Chicago was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  On this particular day, it only took us one and a half hours to get to the airport. That means that we arrived at the airport at 8:00.  For a 9:00 international flight.  The counter was empty. They told us we had to run for the plane.  We ran to security…where we had to wait in line for 20 minutes.  Then, I had to do a passport control, which took another 20 minutes.  When we left this 2nd line, after getting from place to place to pace, it was 9:00.  And we weren’t at the gate, not to mention on the plane with our seat belts fastened.  We ran by some pilots who said to each other °wow.  they must be late°. Right.  We arrived at the gate, and they shuffled us to  bus, which would drive us out to our plane.  We got onto the plane, a full half hour late.  I walked to my seat covering my face (I HATE being late), and sat down  The plane proceeded to take off, and we made it to Chicago on-time.  We were lucky they waited for us.

Right now, we are waiting for Fabio’s mom’s friend to come over and cut our hair. She was supposed to be here 20 minutes ago.

She’s here!  No discussion about being late.  I guess that 20 minutes late by our standards is considered on-time by Italian stadards.