Originally, we were supposed to have a fifth day in Budapest—or almost. Our flight from Budapest to Fiumicino (the closest airport to Rome, which lies about 50 minutes outside the city center) was scheduled to leave at 6:30 PM. But after a nationwide travel strike in Italy, our flight was one of the only Alitalia flights not to be cancelled entirely; instead, it was moved to 10:45 AM.

Besides all the stresses that come with a travel strike (e.g., not being able to check into our flight, or even to contact Alitalia about it), we were bummed to lose time in Budapest. We arrived at the airport very early, only to find that not a single Alitalia employee had shown up to the check-in counters. Instead, there were half a dozen contractors who had no clue how to log into the system, find travel itineraries, check luggage, or print boarding passes. (This was obviously not their fault—the airport wasn’t prepared for a strike of this magnitude.) We were second in line to check our bags, which took well over an hour to do (and keep in mind that there were probably a hundred customers behind us), which made the entire flight even more stressful than it had to be.