Mambo Italiano!

We're HOME!! What an A-MAZ-ING vacation! Italy was absolutely wonderful and everything I hoped and dreamed it would be. We got in late last night and have spent the day recuperating, washing clothes and trying to get back to our normal time zone. Because there's so much to tell and because I want to remember everything about this trip when I read this years from now, I'm going to split the trip up into several different posts, so just be patient. :)

To start with, I'll tell you a little bit about the actual getting there part... Our flight from Jackson to Atlanta was supposed to leave at 12:35 on Thursday afternoon. It didn't. It actually departed about an hour and 15 minutes late, which of course made our tight one-hour connection time in Atlanta impossible. (If you've ever been to that airport, it's huge, and our gates were far apart. It was NOT fun to try to run and catch it, but we tried anyways.) Even if our plane had been on time I don't think we could have made it.

Sooooo... on to Plan B. Delta rescheduled us to fly out of Atlanta late Thursday night and connect in Amsterdam and then on to Rome. The original flight would have been direct to Rome. I had a minor mini break-down at the ticket counter just because this whole vacation didn't seem like it would actually happen. The lady was so incredibly sweet and gave us vouchers for food and drinks at the airport (since we had 5 hours to kill) and free drink vouchers for the plane. She also ended up booking our seats from Amsterdam to Rome eight times accidentally just to make sure we had a spot. Bless her heart. She was an angel.

So off to Amsterdam we went about 11 p.m. that night. We flew all night and arrived early Thursday afternoon to connect. The flight to Rome was so nice. It was daylight, we sat by the window and actually flew right over the Swiss Alps.

After more than 24 hours in a plane or airport, we arrived in Rome about 4:30 Friday afternoon, got our luggage (we were worried it wouldn't connect like we did) and finally got our rental car. It was an Opel Insignia, a brand new station wagon. We had hoped for a not-so-brand-new little compact car, but oh well. This pic was not taken in Rome, but here's a preview of the Tuscany pictures to come...

We left the airport right during rush hour traffic in Rome. It was a tense few minutes while we waited for our GPS to locate the satellite since we started our journey in the parking garage, but we made it onto the autostrada (interstate) and FINALLY made it to our B&B in Tuscany about 9:30 p.m. Italy time (2:30 p.m. here). So of course, the next order of business was this...

We listened to the peace and quiet of the Tuscan hillside (remember it's pitch black and we couldn't really see how pretty it was at all) and finally called it a night about 11. We were SO glad to be there and ready to officially start vacation.

Stay tuned for the next leg of our adventure... :)