Journeying in Luxury

 

Buon Giorno,

Here I am at Genoa Cristobal Columbo airport for a very early flight. I'd booked a taxi, and the driver showed up at exactly the right time and informed me by text he'd arrived. We had a smooth trip to the airport, and I popped out to join the Sky Priority line because I'm flying business class. It's much shorter than the usual lines. I was directed to the lounge, but it is not open, so I went through security--very quick and smooth.

I am hungry as I did not get breakfast, but they will feed me on the plane. I just have to wait.  The airport is pretty small, but it does have duty free shops, which were open, and I had a look around. I squirted myself with Hermes Voyager. Very nice. Extremely expensive.

KLM no longer does first class, so I am at the top of the food chain. One fun perk of sitting at the front of the plane is that I got a glimpse of our handsome young pilot.

Greetings from Amsterdam waiting to board. The flight here was pleasant. It was a small plane, so the seats were more like premium economy, but I got a proper breakfast of yoghurt, muesili, and a salad with eggs and cheese. My tea came in a pretty china mug. It wasn't blue and white delftware, but it was painted to look like it.

Schipol has wonderful duty free shops, but my trek to the gate was so long, I couldn't afford to stop. Time to board!

Here is my seat. Because I had this space all to myself, I was able to take off my shoes.

Here are the good goodies that welcomed me aboard.

Instead of the usual gin and tonic, I requested a special KLM cocktail and the flight attendant made it for me. I thought it would just come out of a bottle. It was very boozy, and frankly I did not enjoy it that much. I am more of an aperitif person. The cocktail came with a lovely little bowl of Dutch cheese.

Here's the appetizer--which would have been enough for a full meal for me.

Salmon, salad and asparagus with wine from South Africa.

I had dinner, too, which I ate without taking a photo. More asparagus--it was white as the Germanic peoples like it with ham and more wine. Then came dessert. I picked cheese and was given some ruby port to go with it.

By this time I was stuffed and overfilled with alcohol. Another meal was offered before we landed, but I took a pass on that.

I got some sleep and was very comfortable also reading my kindle. The flight attendants learned all our names, and it was nice to see how the other 1% flew for a change. The little Dutch house at the start of the post was KLM's parting gift. It holds a sample of gin. Frequent flyers collect the different versions. Fortunately I'm not going back to coach. Premium Economy will do for me.

Here I am home again. After being pampered and cosseted for ten and a half hours, getting dumped out at LAX and having to make my way home was a bit of a wrench.