We’re Here, We’re Exhausted, It’s Beautiful. Day 1 In Italy

Check out the nice fruit bowl and bottle of wine left for us by Sally, our Airbnb hostess, followed by a few shots taken out of different windows of our apartment where we spent three weeks. That is minus the 3-day side trip to mosaic city, Ravenna, home to eight UNESCO World Heritage sites!

The first 2 days of our travel time (3 days going and 3 days again on the return –ugh!) we had early flights, like 6:15 AM early. And we had no idea what to expect with TSA, necessitating a wake-up at dark o’clock both days. Today, our last day en route to the village of Visgnola (closest known town is probably Bellagio, in Northern Italy, very near the Swiss border), our flight from JFK was not scheduled until 6:33 PM so we got a late check out, to sleep in. Nice, but sleeping in going east meant we woke up at around 5 the next morning even though we’d have preferred to much later. But that’s ok, cause at least we didn’t have to rush!

The plane took a long time to get off the ground -long enough for me to watch most of an hour and a half documentary on Antarctica. No mechanical troubles, just vying for take-off position at busy JFK airport. Then a 7½ hour flight. But they fed us well and often up front.

So we’re here, it is as charming as we’d hoped it would be from the little we’ve seen so far, but getting the GPS running from our airport arrival (with the European maps uploaded) was tricky. As you can imagine, it didn’t work too well in the car rental garage and we feared getting on the busy road without a clue where to go. Lots of driving in circles (and recalculating £$&?! ¥@) sleep-deprived and yelling at each other by this time. But we made it, found the apartment and crashed full of excitement for the days that lay ahead of us.

Aloha, Mikie ~just a blogger (fightin’ like a girl)

~Psst, tired of politics? Check out Travel in the Categories drop down menu (right side panel) for my blogs posted from interesting locations during my travel adventures.