March 19-20, 2008

So we got on a plane at 8pm and ended up at our destination the following night at 8pm (plus a six hour time difference). At this moment, I am lying on our bed in Florence with toothpicks holding my eyes open. It’s 12:30am (6:30 pm Chicago time) and we’re just about to go to sleep.

But first, a brief recap of our adventure so far. A few years ago, Ohare moved all the restaurants inside the security gates. It’s a pain when you take someone to the airport and there aren’t enough chairs to sit down in the ticket terminal, instead that person has to go through security and sit alone until their plane boards. We anticipated this when we planned on getting something to eat at the airport. Just a little snack or something since plane food is completely inedible. Soo we get all the way through the security lines, wave our shampoo around and remove the laptop, etc and realize that in the international terminal, the food is outside the security lines. SOOOO I had to leave stuff with Jose and then go get food, go back through the security line this time passing through my shoes and my hot dogs and fries (in separate containers thank you very much). Needless to say I was a tad crabby already when it was time to board the plane. we sat on the tarmac for 25 minutes while they removed someone “for security” reasons from our plane and were searching for his bag. Finally we have lift off and I am not kidding that pilot went from 5mph to airborn in 10 seconds. We were looking out the window to see if the runway was on fire from the wheel treads. We flew Swiss Air and they had a tremendous selection of movies. I was just settling in to watch Atonement (everyone has their own screen on the back of the chair in front of you — and a nifty remote so you can watch whatever you want) when suddenly the screen went from 15 inches from my face to SIX!!! because the person in front of me decided to recline their chair. My biggest travel pet peeve is people who insist on reclining that stupid seat when they don’t need too. Soo for the entire 7 hour flight I was almost glued to the seat in front of me, oh except for dinner when they made her put the seat up. I was rather uncomfortable the whole time and did not get to see Atonement, however I did watch Enchanted at about 4am when I couldn’t sleep and could justifably recline my OWN chair because the guy behind me was reclining and wasn’t going to be staring at the screen a millimeter from his eyes.

The Zurich airport was nice, but we had to run to the gate to make our flight and this one had much more space. After we arrived in Rome, we had to catch a train to the other train station to get our train to Florence. This was when the crisis of the day happened. I went to take money from the ATM and it refused to give me anything. “Notify your bank’ and “bank error” were the messages that I got. Jose had called the bank on Tuesday to let them know we’d be using the card in Italy, but something didn’t work. So after 5 ATMS and a small amount of panicking, I called the bank and got it straightened out. WHEWWWWWWW.

Here are some photos of Villa La Sosta, the B and B where we stayed in Florence.  It was beautiful!

After we arrived at our B&B in Florence and got cleaned up we went to eat dinner. I had a delicious plate of tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce.  It was so good!

Jose had spaghetti with tomato, garlic and pepper flakes HOTTTT

and we shared a delicious panna cotta.

YUM O

Here’s the restaurant link
can’t think or type anymore– lots to do tomorrow. more stuff to come.
Ciao!