The first of many posts about Italy.

I want to post many (many) of the photos, so this will take awhile. … you are forewarned.

The wedding was on a Wednesday, so we planned our trip to basically be weekend to weekend and I only used 5 days of PTO.

But, that also means we really had to get an early start if we wanted to take in as much Italy as possible … so Friday night (10/9) I got off work at 10p, came home and still had to pack. Andrew and I weren’t really tired plus we were pretty excited, so we didn’t end up going to bed until almost 1a.

Then were up just after 4a for showering and getting ready to go. Yup 3 hours of sleep.

Andrew’s mom very graciously picked us up and we got to LAX in time for our 710a flight (read: EARLY). The first photo in this post is Andrew and I at about 7a just after boarding the plane.

5ish hour flight to New York’s JFK airport for our flight (image below). Maybe the longest flight Andrew had ever been on, and it was still only the first leg of our trip.

The flight from New York to Rome was around 8 hours or so. American Airlines is just OK. No outlets for laptops or individual in-flight entertainment screens (like Continental has), but it wasn’t terrible. Andrew and I had one of the side aisles with only 2 seats, so we didn’t have to be that close to other people. We were fed, we attempted to sleep. Andrew ended up watching a couple of the really bad movies they were showing on the in-flight entertainment.

Not terrible, but my flight to England on Continental was better.

Our plane was scheduled to land in Italy a little bit after sunrise, so when we started getting close, I lifted up our window screen to look for our first glimpse of Italy.

Italy.

It’s so amazing and unbelievable and overwhelming trying to realize that you are now in another country across an ocean. Trying to realize that you are now physically in a place that you have only ever heard about or learned about before.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

We landed, and really most airports are basically the same.

Follow the crowd of people, look for the ‘baggage claim’ signs. Lucky for us the signs were in Italian AND English … otherwise we would have been in no state to look up any Italian. Keep in mind by this time we had been up for about 24 hours almost. Not counting the little bit of napping I (not Andrew) had done on the plane.

Going through customs was a ridiculous breeze. I’m not sure if the guy helping me even looked at my photo in the passport. He pretty much opened it to a random page, stamped and I was done. Truly. No questions, nothing.

Then, after getting our baggage, I had to go find an ATM. We had some Euros but not a lot, and really wanted to find an ATM in a place where there was likely to be one.

Of course, the first ATM I found was out of cash …. walked down the total other direction, found 2 ATMs and only one of those giving cash.

Going outside to a taxi and we just kept remembering our Rick Steves advice: get in line at the taxi stand and ignore the people trying to hustle you into their non-sanctioned cab. Gypsies and scam artists who get tourists for a lot of $$.

You can see in the photo below how tired (and gross) we were.

Andrew, feel free to comment on this all at any time …

We got a taxi ride into the city (40 Euro for up to 4 people and luggage), and the taxi driver had on an American music station (Madonna and Michael Jackson to start).

The drive into the city was maybe 15 or 20 min or so … through suburbs into the city … slightly easing our way into the trip …

graffiti and tiny Smart cars and signs in Italian and Andrew saying, “I feel so lost. None of this looks familiar.”

I’ll post more about our Bed and Breakfast later (Hotel Danilo) but for now … here’s a couple quick shots:

We arrived in Rome, gave the taxi driver the address and the first thing we have to figure out is how to get to this B&B that’s really just an apartment unit on the 3rd floor or so of this building ….

We ended up leaving our luggage safely at the B&B and went out for a day or so of touristing ….