We received a very unfortunate piece of news on the final day of our vacation: Alli’s high school art teacher and mentor had passed away after a battle with cancer. It was a really rough time – Ms. McGuire was the reason that Alli became a painter and much of the reason that Alli took the trip to Europe to see all of the artwork that we did.

The news came as a shock to her, but we were buoyed by the fact that we would in fact be arriving home in just enough time to drive to Council Bluffs for the memorial service. We waited quietly for Claudio to come pick us up so we could make our train from Naples to Rome.

We decided early on that we would fly in and out of Paris because it was considerably cheaper than flying out of Rome. Plus, it gave us the opportunity to see Paris, which was something that I really wanted to do with Alli.

What this meant, though, was that we would have a full day of travel our last day of vacation. First we would ride with Claudio to Naples, then we would catch a train to Rome, and then we would catch another train that would take us overnight to Paris, where we would wake up and have plenty of time to make our flight home from Charles de Gaulle airport.

The first part of the trip went remarkably well. We arrived in Naples with plenty of time to make our train (thanks to Claudio, the consiglieri of the Italian Taxi Mob), and we arrived in Rome with enough time to grab some food before our night train.

We went to a place called Mr. Panino, a fast-food, Italian version of Subway, only without all the health. Man, was it ever disgusting. We grabbed our last gelato of the trip in the airport and it ended up almost making up for the nastiness that was Mr. Panino – it was creamy and tasty, probably the 3rd best gelato we had (out of 11 total, I think).

Our train from Rome to Paris was slightly delayed, which sucked because the Rome Termini train station is a madhouse, full of begging gypsies who exploit their own children and various vagabonds and smokers. Plus, it was spectacularly hot.

When we got on the train and into our tiny traveling car (the picture at right shows ALL of the room – the beds are behind that mirror and fold down), the heat was stifling. The air conditioning was barely leaking out of the single vent by the window and it didn’t work properly unless you shut yourself in the closet of a room, which emphasized the suffocating nature of the heat.

We pulled away from the station about 30 minutes late, which didn’t cause us a ton of worry – the guy who was the train representative in our coach assured us we’d make up the time on the way. Even if we didn’t, we had over 4 hours to make our plane when we arrived in Paris – plenty of time to get from Gare du Nord, where we’d be arriving, up to the second Charles de Gaulle airport train terminal.

Alli and I passed some of the time watching episodes of The Office on our ipod video (totally genius) and The Italian Job. We tried putting the beds down and crowding into one of them, but the heat persisted through most of the night, keeping us plenty uncomfortable along the way. We attempted sleep, but as it was before, sleep was difficult on the train. It was made more difficult when in the middle of the night, we discovered that we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. We got concerned as the stops got longer; at one point we were probably stationary for over an hour.

As light came, we began passing through French towns, which was encouraging, but not uplifting considering that we had to get to Paris, which sits in the Northwest part of France. I knew that once we passed through Dijon that we were a couple hours out. We were scheduled to be in Dijon around 6:45. We arrived after 9.

We were really starting to get concerned now. The cabin train rep assured us that we’d only be 2 hours late, which would be enough time for us to make our plane still, but any later and we’d be seriously pushing it considering we were on an international flight to Newark.

The cabin train rep lied. 2 hours became 3. We now had just over an hour to get off our train, catch a metro from Southern Paris to Northeastern Paris, clear security and make our plane. It was starting to look bleak. I started to unravel and my wife, God bless her, was the one who remained calm along the way. We finally managed to get some change to get onto the subway and got quickly on the train to the airport. We had to make 11 stops in about 45 minutes.

We didn’t make it.

Considering that we were trying to return home in time for a funeral, it was a major blow. As I spoke with the Continental desk, Alli sobbed behind me, which made me all the more upset that Continental was not doing more to assist us in finding another flight out. It’s no wonder that people are disgruntled with the airline industry – Continental provided us with no assistance and absolutely no concern for our well-being. I could chalk it up to the desk workers being French, but it is the same back in the states. We need an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights and quickly.

After attempting to get on several different airlines (despite the Continental desk telling us that we couldn’t…we could for a fee), we resigned ourselves that we were not going to get home that night. We found the only hotel that was a part of the airport, the Airport Sheraton. It was certainly above what we wanted to spend, but I really did not want to get a taxi or shuttle to another, less expensive hotel. Considering that I was planning to make Trenitalia or SNCF pay for our stay, I wasn’t too worried about it (I am still waiting to hear back from them).

I had an absolutely spectacular cheeseburger – something I’d denied myself these 3 weeks – that evening in the hotel terrace restaurant. While we could have stayed somewhere cheaper, it was nice to stay in a quality hotel and get a good night’s sleep after all that we’d been through in the past 36 hours. It was awesome to get a nice hot shower and to have a comfortable bed to sleep in after sleeping on plywood for a week in Amalfi.

We awoke plenty early to make our flight, arriving when the airport opened. We got in line to clear customs and found ourselves in line for a flight to Newark that left earlier than ours did. This was weird, considering that the morons at the Continental desk told us that we were on the earliest flight out. Another Continental worker that morning managed to get us on the flight because (big surprise) all flights to Newark were delayed. The early flight, scheduled to leave at 9:10 AM was now not scheduled to leave until after NOON.

Guess what. We missed our connection in Newark. But we did finally make it. It turned out that Andie McDowell was on our flight from Paris and the first thing we saw when we got off in Newark was her yelling at someone on a cell phone – a very diva-like moment. We had almost 4 hours to wait for our flight, during which we charged our ipod.

We also had one more celebrity sighting, spotting Nicole Ritchie and all of Good Charlotte waiting for a flight to Nashville. I snapped an OK picture of her, but it’s hard to spot her baby bump. She is so small that it’s hard to imagine her carrying a baby…she looks like she’s maybe 11 years old.

We got on our flight to KC that was supposed to leave around 8:30. DELAYED. But this time, we were on the airplane and sat on the runway for OVER TWO HOURS. After this experience, I’ll never fly Continental again. I don’t care if I have to pay more to fly someone else…it won’t be Continental. It’s so confusing how airlines cannot get their stuff together. I saw an interview with the head of American Airlines and he acted like they had no control over the awfulness that plagues the airways. You and I know this isn’t true. Customer service is at an all-time low in every airline except one. You’d think that the other airlines would study what Southwest is doing right with their domestic flights and figure out how to apply it to international flights.

But alas, the major airlines are all run by morons who think they know what the customer wants, but really have no clue. We finally arrived home after a huge delay, thankful to be back on the ground in Kansas City and to be sleeping in our own bed that night. We were also thankful to have someone picking us up at the airport (thanks, mom).

As dreadful as our travel to and from Paris was…if I had to choose between going and not going…it wouldn’t even be a contest. But still…it would be nice to know that if we decided to go back that the morons who run the airlines and trains somehow managed to remove their heads from their behinds.