[ Aug.2020 ] At the end of August this year, we were originally planning to go to Japan.
But Japan has been virtually adopting a national isolation, so our flight was cancelled.
Instead, we decided to go to Sardinia in Italy.
In Europe, the number of Covid-19 cases went down for a while, but it is increasing again.
In the UK where we live, the two weeks’ quarantine is required after coming back from abroad depending on which country you went, but Italy is not included for this obligation.
We have not heard any cases that a flight has become a cluster.
We have been working at home since March, but we had thought that working place does not have to be our home but anywhere where there is a wifi, and that was another motive for this trip.
So we rented an Airbnb for the first time in Alghero in Sardinia where we had been two years ago and spent 2 weeks there.
First, I will talk about the flight which was our first time in 6 and a half months.
We flew from London to Rome, spent one night and flew again to Sardinia.
This time we flew with Alitalia after so long, so we went to Heathrow Terminal 2 with Uber.
Maybe because the flight was late, 8 pm departure, or maybe because of the Coronavirus, the airport was nearly empty.
Only the passengers could enter the airport and you would have to say good-by to the people who came to see you off at the entrance.
Everyone has to wear a face mask.
As for the social distancing, you have to control yourself and nobody was checking it.
The first thing we noticed was the panels located here and there on the chairs in the waiting room, so that people do not sit next to each other.
I also noticed a worker spraying on chairs for disinfection.
Many of the shops including our favourite cafe in Terminal 2 was closed.
So we went to another one which was more expensive and whose foods were not so attractive.
Here they asked us to fill in a form first, name telephone number and so on before taking us to a table.
After eating too heavy brownie which I could not finish, when we were going to pay the bill, we realised that the UK government scheme of paying 50% off was applied.
The headline of this scheme says 50% off, which sounds very good, but in fact the maximum amount they reduce is only ￡10 and it is applied only on certain days, so in fact it was a mean scheme and I had thought it would not have much effect on businesses.
But I was happy that it was applied to our bill anyway 🙂
At the boarding gate, they checked our temperature.
That was fine, but after this we suffered humiliations.
First: Everyone had to fill in an Alitalia form regarding Covid-19 and print it out to give it to the Alitalia stuff, which we did not know.
So we had to do it at that point, and because of that, we got on the aeroplane the second from the last.
Second: We knew that we all had to wear masks during the flight, but we did not know that Alitalia had extra rule that the mask had to be the surgical one and we were wearing our black masks.
So the cabin clew told us off severely and we were nearly getting off, then another worker came and gave us the spare masks.
I guess that they have someone like us on every flight, but I was impressed by their attitude, scolding us so seriously.
Nobody still knows what the Coronavirus really is and at this stage, the non-professionals like us have to follow what the medical professionals say.
The more people behave as they like, the more difficulty the country would suffer.
We were in some ways looking down on Alitalia as the company in danger of bankruptcy, but we must not underestimate them, I thought this time.
And when we were getting off, they organised to let us do that one row at a time to keep the distance, which was a long process, but I felt much safer.
When we arrived in Rome it was very late, nearly midnight.
We had booked a hotel called Comfort Hotel Rome Airport and we knew that they have a shuttle service, so we called them.
Then the receptionist himself came to pick us up, closing the hotel.
