Day 1 - Friday, April 19 - Off to Italy!

And so, our next adventure has begun! It's a little weird to be traveling on Good Friday evening, but that's just the way the best flight arrangements worked out. Our last minute preparations (laundry - not critical; downloading movies from Netflix - critical) almost got scuttled by a power blackout in the morning. Fortunately, after marking time for 1.5 hours, we were back in gear. A few minutes after I got home from Good Friday service, we left home in rainy conditions and headed for the airport. We pulled into the parking lot where I had booked a reservation for 6:00 p.m. at exactly 6:00 p.m. A positive sign....

After checking our luggage, we flashed our Nexus cards to bypass the regular security screening lineups. But, there was no lineup! Those cards have proven very useful in the past and will in the future for speeding up the screening process.

Our flight on Air Transat left on time at 9:15 p.m. We were flying Club Class - larger seats and more importantly, more legroom. Lovely service. We bypassed the full dinner at 10:30 p.m. but indulged in the warm bread and a fabulous chocolate brownie.

We had very mild turbulence along the way, and a call for a physician to deal with a medical emergency. Didn't relish the thought of having to do an emergency landing in London. So, it wasn't a good night for sleep. Breakfast at 4:30 a.m. our time. Yikes!

We landed early due to the strong tail winds. Time was about noon - Italy is 6 hours ahead of Ontario. Passport control was fast but baggage claim was slow - those Club Class tags didn't seem to do much good. Doug, who is very, very prone to motion sickness when there is turbulence on planes, had no problems. So, we should be good to play tourist tomorrow.

We finally rendezvoused with our driver. We lost some time there. Doug was looking for a sign with our surname - the way the swanky people are greeted at airports in the movies. The driver was holding a sign with the name of the tour company - Great Tours of Italy. Note to self - always make sure husband knows name of tour company!!

Çiao from Bella Italia!Read more