Okay, another tip for the traveling masses: don’t fly internationally out of O’Hare. Or, if you plan on it, don’t get to the international terminal until the very last possible moment. There is absolutely nothing here, and it opens at 13:00. Ah, poor planning, me.
I am revisited by a similar group of travel-weary individuals… this time wandering aimlessly around, every single person doing a full lap of the terminal before realizing the duty-free and newsstand at the entrance were, indeed, the only shops/food/retail available after the hour-long security line. The indignation on people’s faces is obvious, and both pitiable and a bit hilarious.
I have to say, though, it is nice having the run of quite a large terminal. I never really understood the herd mentality of finding your gate and hovering around it with everyone else. They’re not liable to move the flight forward, only backward… all the same I’ve got a row of comfy seats with chargers in between all to myself and I’m juicing up. And I had plenty of privacy for chatting with the popski.
In a vain attempt at staying awake this morning (if I go to sleep at 5pm Chicago time/2pm Berkeley time, it’ll be midnight Rome time), I was serenaded by two young women conversing in Italian (on my ipod, an Italian language course). Not a whole lot stuck, of course, except that one sounded like Anne Hathaway; Italian is indeed very similar to Spanish; and the use of pronouns in Italian is ridiculously complicated. Though I did learn how to say one phrase that I’m guessing I’ll find will be very useful [forgive the spelling, it’s an audio lesson]: ‘mi piache mangare la pasta’… “I like to eat pasta”. Yes, this will be very useful. How did they know that of all of the useless stuff they told me about months and weather, the one they did give me about food would actually be something I’d use? Now if only I could figure out how to change that to “I like to eat cheese”, we’d be all set.
I also had a chance to catch up with the New York Times Dining section (I buy them every Wednesday, but rarely do I get a chance to finish reading them before the next week’s comes out). And the one from August 10 was RIDICULOUS. First off, there was a reference to a Henan province specialty called the “four treasures”- stuffed boned quail inside squab inside chicken inside a duck, at a place called Uncle Zhou (BOWEN???) – “think of it as the Henan forbear of the turducken”. AMAZING. Especially as someone stopped me the other night to ask the name of the pecumple we made last year for the CEE thanksgiving dinner. THE IRONY.
But wait, it gets better. In the same issue, there was an entire section about ways to prepare eggplant, which I will refer when I get a chance… which I know will be of great interest to one person I know (at least, if he’s reading this).
There was also an entire article on ricotta and fresh cheeses in Italy. Thanks, New York Times, for reminding me what kinds of foods I should be seeking out when I’m on this trip, something I did not get a chance to do myself.
AND TO TOP IT OFF… a full-page article about fishermen in PT. JUDITH, RI! What?? Is this like the NYT Dining section written specifically for me? (In case you didn’t know, I have very strong ties to Galilee… and it even mentions the Block Island Ferry).
TBC… Gotta catch my plane.
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