I’ve finally found some time to start blogging about our trip to Europe. I’m going to start from the beginning and add posts until I get through the whole trip. My fingers might fall off if I had to type the entire thing, so I’m going to use the pictures to tell the story.
We found out we could check in the night before to save time, so we drove the whole 10 minutes to the airport and checked in. The next morning, we got through security and check in, in about 5 minutes. This was good because we weren’t stuck in a line, but bad because we had to sit around and wait. We weren’t the most patient people, because we were SO excited to go on our trip! We left out of Gate 5.
When we took off and felt the wheels leave the pavement, we could barely contain our excitement to experience something other than the Cayman culture for awhile. It didn’t last long, though. Once we were in the air, the steel drum music started playing and we were served caribbean style refreshments - platain chips and rum punch. We just couldn’t get away from it! We just had to laugh.
After a flight to Tampa, where we had a nightmare of a time being re-routed to a different terminal and being bumped onto a different, earlier flight, we finally made it to the gate. Once we got there, the flight was delayed. Our new, earlier flight ended up taking off 10 minutes past the time our original flight was supposed to leave. We were nervous that we might not make it to Newark in time to catch our flight to Rome.
Luckily, we found some things we had been missing. Starbucks! High speed internet! US Newspapers! US Weekly and People magazines! It kept us occupied while we waited.
The flight from Tampa was uneventful until we realized we would land with about 10 minutes until our flight left for Rome. The people on the plane were very nice and let us off the plane before they all unloaded. Once we got off the plane we had to RUN to the gate. I mean, full speed, sprinting! We made it in time with our carry ons and just prayed that our checked baggage made it on time, too. It took us awhile to breathe and relax in our seats, but by this time we were both looking pretty haggard.
Once we got on the plane, we were happy to find that it had similar flat screens and personal remotes to the British Airways flight we took to Scotland. It makes for a much nicer flight.
It was a very long flight! Eight hours in the same seat, flying through the night with people all around you snoring, coughing and drooling. However, when we got close to arrival - we were served breakfast. We both took turns cleaning up in the bathroom and decided to check out the views. It was breathtaking! We were flying over the French Alps. There were endless mountains, with snowcaps and clouds at the peaks.
Later on, we flew over the French Rivera coastline and we couldn’t wait to land in Italy!
Once we landed, things kind of went downhill. We waited for our luggaged for two hours and IT NEVER CAME! Not one piece out of the four. So, we drug ourselves over to the customer service desk - where they tried to speak English and we tried to speak English in an Italian accent - haha! We filed a claim and jumped on the last shuttle bus to the cruise docks. It took two hours and unfortunately, I can’t say much about the drive. We both were so exhausted and jet lagged that we slept the whole way. We tried to fight it. I keep trying to keep my head up, but regarless of my efforts it would fall to the side or straight back to the seat. Eventually I gave in and slept.
The ship was huge, but somewhat less impressive the our last cruise. Not because it wasn’t as big, rather - it was actually larger, but instead because we see cruise ships everyday. We were “desensitized” to it. Our room, however, was very impressive! We had been upgraded to a balcony suite!
So that night we got cleaned up, changed into the one other outfit each of us had with us, ate food at a little buffet, worried about our luggage, begged for help getting our luggage and SLEPT. The next morning, we arrived in Naples.
