Things to know when dealing overseas (specifically in Italy):
1. Always keep your receipts: Many vendors print your complete credit card information on receipts and they may later try to charge you for things you already paid for.

2. There is no better business bureau: Not that the BBB is super effective but it does carry a certain amount of weight. If you rent from an international chain you are at least guaranteed to have local options when making complaints.

3. The mentality is snatch and grabs: In most tourist spots (especially in Italy) the mentality is that people are going to only come once so you may as well screw them as much as you can when they do come. They don’t think of repeat customers.

4. They will steal your car: This one may seem confusing. Here’s what happens, you rent a car, they steal it back at night and then charge you the insurance deductible. Use a club or something. Make sure your stuff is locked up tight.

Read more about some specific experiences:

Don’t let my title be misleading. Europe has been awesome. It’s been such a wonderful trip despite our snags and problems. But now, I just want to get home. I was to change the dressing on my knee, I want to lay in a bed that doesn’t belong to someone else. I want my mommy.

We’re getting there

Ryanair took us to within an hour of Barcelona and we had to then buy a 14 euro bus ticket to get actually get into town. We met a nice girl on the plane that had also been booted from the same flight as us because she went to the bathroom or something equally ridiculous.

We were going to get a kebab together and then I yelled at Gary for some dumb argument. He was actually right but I animated and I think it scared the girl away. Whoops. We found the central train station in Barcelona and had to buy 1st class overnight train tickets to get us to Madrid in time for our flight home. That was like 30 euros. I actually chalk all these costs up to Ryanair screwing us.

The train ride was agreeable and when we got to Madrid we had like 6 hours before check-in but I was in no condition to do anything and we sure as hell weren’t going to miss our flight. We were beaten, out of money and sick of moving so we camped out in the airport.

Robynn came through for us and showed up at the airport bearing pastries and that spanish milk drink that they’re so crazy about. She hung out with us for a while before she had to go to class. Thanks Robynn, you’re a life saver

When we checked in with Continental they immediately had a wheelchair brought in for me and treated me so well. It was in such contrast to the bad customer service that Ryanair had given us.

Everyone was so polite and they arranged good seats for me so that I would be able to stretch out and lay down on a bench. I love them.

After a layover and flight delay in NY we finally arrived in Denver and went home. It felt so good to be able to shower and get a few days of stink off me…well…mostly off of me.

Now enjoy pictures of my battle wounds

For those of your who don’t know Ryanair is an airline that operates out of Ireland and hates everyone. Just look at their website. It looks like a Spam site. When I went to order tickets there I accidentally navigated away from the page like 3 times because I thought I must have mistyped the url.

My reason for disliking Ryanair is much more personal.

When tried to goto the airport in Rome we had directions from the internet. We were going to follow them when a person in the subway told us that we needed to take a train from the train station. So we ran up there and got told that we couldn’t take a train there. After wasting more time, we finally got back on the subway and followed the directions that we found on the Internet. They took us to the exact opposite side of Rome than we needed to be at.

Ryanair’s policy is that you must be checked in 40 minutes before your flight. We found ourselves on the wrong side of rome with only 35 minutes to get to our check in. Taking a subway was out of the question. We had to get a taxi.

Let me draw a picture for you. Imagine me:

Imagine me, bloody, arm in a sling, running on very little sleep, limping and in an considerable amount of pain running around trying to get someone to tell us how to get to the airport.

We tried to hail a taxi unsuccessfully for 10 minutes. Finally we got one and he took us to the airport. It cost 60 euros and we ran into the airport and to our checkin station. There was no one there and we were 5 minutes late.

We tried to talk to another rep from Ryanair who told us that she wouldn’t help us and that we had to go rebook a flight. Nevermind that the flight was late, nevermind that I was bleeding everywhere. It didn’t matter.

We went to the information station that she told us to go there and there was a line with no one working the counter.

We went to security and showed them our flight confirmation but they wouldn’t let us through without a boarding pass. Not really their fault. We went back to the Ryanair and waited. There was a girl there but she told everyone that her shift was over and that she wouldn’t help anyone.

Now we were 10 minutes late for check-in and the plane was still late. Boarding was no where near to starting and it would have been easy to get us on the plane, but no. Ryanair doesn’t care about it’s customers.

Finally someone showed up to help customers after another 10 minutes. The other customers in line saw our predicament and sent us ahead of them. We started trying to explain our situation to the Ryanair reps and they shh’d us.

Dejected we waited. We tried asking questions but the Ryanair employees seemed not to speak english. In utter exasperation I told Gary that I hated Italy. You have to give me a break, we’d been robbed twice (Gary got pickpocketed that morning), we’d been attacked by Italian footballers, we’d been threatened by a mobster rental place and people gave us bad directions to the airport. Oh, and we’d been ripped off just about everywhere we went.

The ryanair employee thought that this was worth commenting on and finally snapped at me in perfect english. She told me that hating Italy didn’t even make sense because she wasn’t Italian and Ryanair wasn’t an Italian company. I told her that it had nothing to do with her (not true) and that it was just the system. I was trying to be nice and take any personal offense away from my statement but she just got mad and offended anyway.

She told us we had to buy all new tickets, even though the plane hadn’t started boarding. She didn’t care that I’d been in an accident.

We finally got a flight to Barcelona, which meant we’d need to take an all night train ride to get to Madrid in time for our flight. Our tickets were 80 euros each and we didnt’ get a refund for the tickets we’d already bought.

Getting on the flight was a joke, everyone rusehed to find seats, pushing and shoving their way past me. No one thought I might need special consideration givin that I was limping horribly, arm in sling, bleeding. It was horrible.

Ryanair, from everything that I can gather does not care about their customers, they don’t care about your needs, they don’t care about you. Don’t fly ryanair.