TII begins

TII stands for "This is Italy" and is a phrase I stole from the best blog about Rome in the world. www.roninrome.com. 

We had our first TII experience at the ticket counter before going through security. We needed to get our boarding passes and were concerned about the weight of our Rick Steves rolling bags. We knew they fit the size restriction, but how much could they weigh?

One Alitalia webpage says 5 kg per bag which is an insane 11 pounds. The empty bag alone weighs 7 pounds to start. Yet another Alitalia page says 8 kg (17 1/2 pounds) which is still virtually impossible to do unless all you pack are clothes (no shoes).

We get to the ticket counter early and a very sweet young Italian agent tells us to put our bags on the scales. The moment of truth. They weigh almost 12 kg each. She smiles and says "Those are a little over the 10 kilogram limit." Yeah, 20% over this new 10 kg limit! We say "We can move some things around" meaning into our "personal item" bags which don't get weighed (thankfully) and which already feel like we're smuggling lead ingots. So we reach down to start re-packing thinking she's going to weigh the bags again when we're done. Nope. She just smiles and hands us our boarding passes and sends us on our merry way.

This is Italy, where enforcement of rules is sometimes completely at the whim of the enforcer. Thank heaven we weren't flying Lufthansa. :-)