Italy Trip - 1st Installment

Alison and I took our 10th anniversay trip to Italy on July 5th. We (I) kept a journal during our journey and I had grandiose plans to type up a vacation newsletter. But we've been back 2 weeks and have been quickly reminded why we can't get anything done around here. So instead I've decided to attempt to share our trip piecemeal in more manageable blog entries. As I share the stories I'll link to pictures on our Picasa page. After I finish the blog entries I'll upload all of the remaining pics. Hope you enjoy!

First, the background. Alison's great grandparents on her Father's side immigrated from a small town in Italy called Acquasanta around the turn of the 19th century. She has always been interested in her Italian heritage and wanted to visit Italy. About two and half years ago I actually decided to plan ahead for an anniversary and opened a secret savings account, to which I direct deposited a little off the top of my paycheck each week since then. In February I finally decided to tell her about the trip, partially because I thought she would enjoy looking forward to it and also because I needed her help planning it.

My big reveal came at a nice Italian restaurant located in an old converted home in the cultural district of Ft. Worth. The weather was icy that evening and we were the only ones there, aside from the owner and his family at the table next to us. I had bought some Italy travel books and a couple of Rick Steves DVD's on Italy. I put them all in a nice box along with a balance statement from the secret account. She made fun of the wedding wrapping paper, but hey, I couldn't find wrapping paper that said "suprise, I have a secret savings account and I'm taking you to Italy for our 10th anniversary." I believe her words when she opened it were "No way!"

Skip ahead to summer. Despite summer being the busy European travel season we planned for a June trip since that was the easiest time to get help with the kids. But I had a business trip come up so we delayed until July. Alison's Aunt Chris was very gracious in offering to come out to Texas and watch the kids while we were gone. We quickly accepted that offer and bought her plane tickets before she could realize what she had volunteered for. We also had a pilot friend from church who kindly gave us a couple of "buddy passes" on Delta.

The buddy passes will figure prominently in our adventures traveling to Italy and back so I'd better explain them. Delta employees have a certain number of buddy passes they can give to friends and family. Basically you pay taxes and fees and Delta will fly you wherever you want to go, provided they have extra seats on the plane. They'll even bump you to first class if there's room. Our friend warned us that it's a risk in the summertime because it's the busy travel season. But we were flexible and they were much cheaper than even a low cost economy ticket. The plan was for us to drive to Atlanta and catch a direct flight to Milan, since domestic flights tended to be more difficult to get on and the Atlanta-Milan flight looked pretty open. Even with gas and an extra hotel night or two we would still come out way ahead.

We set our travel day for Tuesday, July 5. The flight left about 6pm eastern time and arrived in Milan the following day at 9am local time. Because we had no guarantees on when we would get there if the flight turned out to be full we were hesitant to book hotels, most of which were nonrefundable within a week of arrival. Although we had a rough idea of an itinerary once we got there, we really didn't know how long we wanted to stay at each place. The end result was that we had hotel reservations for only 1 night out of the 9 we expected to be there, and it wasn't the first night. But hey, that would be part of the adventure.

Alison's aunt flew out the weekend before we left to give some time for her and the kids to get adjusted before we left. On Sunday, July 3, I got the brilliant idea to check the flights from DFW to Atlanta, just to see if maybe could avoid driving. Lucky us! There was a Monday evening flight that looked pretty open. A few e-mails to Steve, our pilot friend, and he had us set up on the flight to Atlanta. We might even get to stay Monday night with our friends, the Fullers.

So the plans, such as they were, were all in place. I'll leave it there for this installment. Sorry, no pictures yet. There will definitely be some next time.