On the way there

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Today started off very early- a 3:45 AM car hire appointment to Glasgow. And guess who over slept 😊

Now, two airports, numerous countries, one time zone, and about 12 hours later, I'm almost in Italy! We stopped in Dusseldorf, Germany for a connecting flight, so there are mostly Germans on board it seems and a few Italians. One of our flight attendants, Fernando, is pretty funny. He walked down the aisle and said to a group of 50-60 yr old American tourists, "Now on this side as we come into Rome, you can see the Colosseum there, and the Vatican over here, and (turning to the other side of the plane) you people on this side want to sit on the other side when you fly back home. There isn't anything on this side." Then a few minutes later, "You have IKEA in the states, yes?" They nod, and he says, "Yes, IKEA, you see it right over there."

Anyways, I'm really surprised at how many people seem to speak english really well here. I know it's been in airports and on other international travel, but I'm hoping that it'll be this easy to get around once we get to Italy. All of the signs in the Dusseldorf airport were in German and English, and the only time I felt somewhat disadvantaged by not knowing the language was while I was looking at some cards in the airport that were all in German.

I made sure to take a bunch of pictures of Weeze Airport signs. Today we're going to check out the Vatican in Rome. Tomorrow's the Colloseum and hopefully Trajan's Column. I'm very excited to see that- it sounds like it's located near the Colloseum (or at least the map suggests so). But at this point, I think I'm most interested in finding our hostel and relaxing/sleeping. Hopefully after a good night of sleep tonight, I will have recooperated from missing out on so much this past week. I'm nervous about arriving, but it's going to be amazing!

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Photos

me in front of our plane to rome
it was cool, we got to walk outside to get on it :)

the first picture of the trip
it was 3:45 in the morning and amanda was a little tired :)