Italy, Greece, and Turkey: Day 1

There were so many things that we got to experience on this trip. Jason and I were blessed beyond by my father who provided us with this once in a lifetime opportunity. We will forever be grateful for the fond memories that we have. I'm going to try to recount as much as possible over the next few days of our adventure.

Day 1:

After only being home for 36 hours from Virginia, I had both Jason and I packed, and we were on our way to the Moncton airport with my dad and his girlfriend Dee. We met my sister Lindsay and her boyfriend Matt there, and in a short time we were on our way to Toronto. Jason and I were excited, but I don't think it had fully set in yet. At this point I was still going over everything in my mind, worried that I had forgot something. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I checked my bag to make sure I had our passports and Euros in hand; anything else I forgot would have to be purchased somewhere at this point.

Landing in Toronto it was Jason's mission to figure out how he could have a cigarette before we got on our 9 hour flight to Rome. This was one of those times - you can be sure I told him this a few times in not so nice ways - that his smoking was stressing me out. He had to leave the secured area we were in and then go back through another security checkpoint. The rest of us in the meantime, had to walk to the international departure area a different way. I just pictured it time to get on the plane and Jason was stuck at security or something. Paranoid much or what? Anyways, all was good and he made it in time. (waiting for the airplane below... little did Dee and I know that it would be a long time before we had a "real" - if you can call Tim Horton's coffee this - coffee again)

I was getting more excited as we waited to get on the plane. It still seemed surreal that I was going to Europe. As I sat in a terminal I had never been in before at Toronto Pearson, I wondered if I'd ever be there again. I also had this constant nagging nervousness about flying for 9 hours straight over the Atlantic ocean. I'm not a big fan of flying. I have to do it a lot now it seems and I swear it takes a couple of years off of my life every time I do it. I was thinking of my trip a few years before that to Vancouver, BC. It was only a 6 hour flight, and I wanted to get off it after about 4. Having Jason with me, and knowing that I was going to have a trip of a lifetime certainly helped. We got on the plane - Jason and I were the only couple lucky enough to have a window seat - and it was 9:30 pm Toronto time (same as Virginia and 10:30 NB time). The captain came on and told everyone to adjust their watches to Rome time, meaning it was now 3:30 am. That was a transition that took as a few days to recover from. One would think flying over night would be the way to do this trip, I certianly did. However, I think if I did it again I wouldn't choose this option. It's really hard to sleep comfortably on an airplane. A nap on a day time flight I can do, but a full night's sleep not so much. We were all feeling it when we landed the next day at 11:30 am Roma time (ha ha ha Roma...so this is what the flight attendants kept saying instead of Rome and I was thinking "duh it's Rome"...duh Erin it's Rome in English and Roma in Italian...good reminder that I wasn't in Kansas anymore).

Flight= uneventful for the most part, some turbulence, 2 meals (impressive because it's been a long time since I got anything more than a small bag of pretzels on a place) one was supper and one breakfast (which was a crappy banana muffin that I made Jason gag down as he whined that it tasted like banana popsicles, we didn't know how long it would be until we ate again though at this point), and had 7 seats across (again something I hadn't seen in a while, Linz and I used to take these big planes all the time when we went to see my dad in Florida, but not anymore, they're all small).

HOLY CRAP WE'RE IN ITALY!!!!