Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Italia: On our Way!

It's been almost two months since our sister adventure to Italia, and I still haven't blogged about it!
I'll break it up so this post isn't a mile long.
Beginning with our travels from here to there.

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We flew from San Diego to Atlanta overnight, leaving on the Friday night before Palm Sunday. 
No problem. We were stoked. Although poor Carly was pretty sick. But she had the BEST attitude.


We had this great 10 hour layover in Atlanta beginning at 5am.
So we figured, oh we can go get coffee and go to the zoo and hang out in Atlanta for the morning! 
But then, we realized they were having this crazy thunderstorm. 

Scratch that 'leave the airport' plan. 

Plan B: hang out in the airport.
But there's this airline policy we weren't aware of. This whole 'if you have a layover longer than 6 hours, you have to pick up your bags and leave the airport until you are 6 hours from departure.'
hmmmm..... pouring rain... no hotels nearby [that have shuttles, according to airline people]...
so, we got booted out.
We sure took our time leaving. Riding around and around on the airport tram from terminal to terminal.
Having way too much fun at 4:30am.
Just us.


Eventually we got our luggage and found a spot to park it for 4 hours. Thankfully, their airport has this amazing atrium area where people can wait for people to come to baggage. So we found a little corner and took turns taking little naps while the other one babysat our stuff. 
And took pictures.


At 10am, we were at 6 hours and could check back in! We headed back through security and found our gate. Which wouldn't actually be our gate for another 5 hours since there were like 4 flights through there at first. We found the charger station and busied ourselves with taking plane pictures and playing angry birds on the ipad. 
Thank goodness for the ipad!


Finally, it was OUR TURN! We hopped in line and boarded our plane to ROMA!


 Longest flight ever [or so we thought] but we got to sit in the little two-seater section by the window, which we pretended was like our own little resort. ha. ;) Taking advice from our frequent traveler stepdad, we bought a bunch of candy and magazines for our flight attendants. And let me tell you, we had one flight attendant who was so appreciative and took extra special care of us. Great advice Steve!


Around 6:15am on Sunday morning, Palm Sunday, we broke through the clouds,
and for the first time, Italy came into view!


We were WAY excited to 1) see land, and 2) see Italy.
I love flying at sunrise or sunset. I feel like it's a step closer to the heavenly view. 
In a small way.


At 7am, touchdown ROME!

We made it! Let the fun begin!

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