The road to Sardinia has been paved with time, energy, and a lot of Euros. I guess this analogy doesn't work so well considering Sardinia is an island off the coast of Italy, but you get the point. Two days before my mom and her new husband, Asaad were to leave for their honeymoon to Greece and a week before my sister and I were to join them, we made the conscience decision to cancel our Greek vacation that took my mom 6 months to plan (due to Greece's unfortunate financial crises) and look for an alternative vacation destination.
Asaad's first choice was Sardinia, an island my mom, sister and I knew very little about. Jay, my sister, and Emma, my sister's girlfriend scoured the internet tirelessly to salvage the vacation and create a memorable and suitable honeymoon for mom and Asaad. As you can imagine, this was no easy task being that it was last minute during the height of the vacation season and we were looking at a destination that was definitely "on the path." They found a gorgeous resort in Chia Laguna (one of the most beautiful beaches on the island). Mom and Asaad arrived safely last week and have settled in to a much needed relaxing vacation.
My sister and I are about to arrive in Sardinia after an equally challenging couple of days. After returning from our rustic Catskills getaway in upstate New York, we arrived at her flat in Brooklyn on Friday evening, at which time she stated, "I should probably look at my passport." Plot twist...naturally it was expired. With the weekend ahead and our flight due to depart on Sunday, we were proverbially F'd. They only thing we could do, was change our flights last minute, prepare Jay for arriving at the Federal building on Monday morning with all documents in hand, and hope for a same day passport renewal.
And that's exactly what we did. Flights got changed to Tuesday evening, Jay was twelfth in line at the Federal building at 5am (ahead of 40 others by 7am), delivered her fully completed documents to the window at 8am and had her freshly minted passport in hand by 2pm. This allowed her another couple days to get packed and me another couple days to see friends in NYC and come Tuesday evening, we boarded our flight to London Heathrow. We arrived on Wednesday morning at 7am, a quick ($250) taxi to Stansted Airport (where?), made our EasyJet flight at 10am, and are just about to land in Sardinia to join our parents and at last bask in the Mediterranean sand and sun. To be continued...