Italy or Bust

In honor of Brad's 50th and our 15th wedding anniversary in 2019, we decided that in lieu of our usual beach vacation, we needed to go some place that Brad had always wanted to visit. We also felt like the kids were old enough that they would get something out of a big trip and as a bonus, they had both studied Rome in 2nd grade so they had some background.  We went through a travel agency, which made life so easy since she arranged all the travel between hotels, airports, railways, etc.  

On June 8th we headed to the airport to start our adventure.  Let me just say that I have never been so thankful for a three hour layover in my life.  The weather was okay in Little Rock but storms delaying flights that were going into Atlanta.  Our flight ended up boarding on time so everything was looking good.  As soon as boarding was complete, the pilot came over the intercom to let us know that the windshield needed to be glued back in.  I don't know where ground control had to go to get the glue but it took at least 30 minutes and then we had to wait for it to dry.  During this wait, the delays in Atlanta advanced to grounding flights due to fly into Atlanta.  I started to be concerned about our connecting flight and  I had in my mind the last possible time we could leave Little Rock and still make our connection in Atlanta; thankfully we hit this time and even made it to Atlanta in time to have a quick bite before boarding for Rome.  

Our flight over was not full so we had the left row and the middle row to ourselves, which allowed us to spread out a bit. The kids were so excited to have their own video screens and be able to select their own movies.  We did try to get a little sleep since our arrival time in Rome was in the morning but it was hard since it was still only about 5 pm our time.  We might have gotten about two hours each if we were lucky.