the gold on the link was 35k. i have a 40k gold offer in my email right now that they obviously send out as their min. offer to anyone with a skymiles account and there were 50 and 60k (
) offers mentioned in the thread.
flying transatlantic, the only carrier you're likely to access with really high fees is ba. you can use aa to get to rome without crazy fees if you just avoid ba. ua will get you there easy with low fees. i think you said you wanted to go this spring, and you're not going to go from 0k delta to 120k without using bus cards, which you said you don't want to do. and if you've changed your mind on applying for bus cards, then you should prolly focus on higher value biz cards like the inks, at least to start.
the delta personal cards are also not churnable, so you'd be burning your one chance to get that bonus at a time when the bonus is not at a historic high (unless you can access the 60k offer), basically because mocat happened to mention that rome is a delta hub. which is a ridiculous reason.