Away We Go!

I don't normally make a point of blogging about the actual travel involved in a vacation (though truth be told, I don't generally make a point about blogging in general), but that said, a few things happened during our 20 hours of torture that it felt like an opportune experience to share.

For starters, Sean and I went over 48 hours without more than a few hours sleep, which did not bode well for either of us. Anyone who knows me well knows that I err on the side of cranky when I get tired, and Sean was a real trooper (ie Saint) for putting up with me. Our flight left at 6:45 am Wednesday morning and between packing, cleaning the house for Sean's mom, and dropping Leo off at my parents, we only squeezed in one hour of sleep Tuesday night before heading to the airport. The flight to JFK went off without a hitch and even our 6 hour layover flew by relatively quickly. With only one full day in Rome, we aimed to spend the time organizing our plan of attack and prioritizing the sights we wanted to see.

However, Sean's ADD quickly kicked in and we were both distracted by the monstrosity that rolled in outside the nearest window - the A380. It was my first celebrity spotting and oh my gosh is it huge. I clearly wasn't the only one impressed with the size because a group of paparazzi quickly crowded around the window to take pictures. Around 6:00 pm the airline began boarding and Sean and I fiercely guarded our window real estate to watch it take off. As 8:00 rolled around and the plane still hadn't budged, we started to wonder if our plane would make it off the ground faster. At 8:30, the plane finally started to pull away from the terminal and came to a standstill on the runway. Disappointed, Sean and I had to leave before it could take off so as not to miss our own flight. I felt sorry for everyone trapped on that plane for the 2 1/2 hours it sat at the gate. Even first class would get old in that amount of time. As a self-proclaimed Boeing brat I have no trouble finding fault with Airbus, but even for all the supporters out there, 2 1/2 hours seems like a ridiculous amount of time. Moral of the story - bigger isn't always better.


The one benefit of wasting time hoping for takeoff was that we also snagged some pictures of the beautiful New York sunset.


Thank goodness we finally made it.