Bon Voyage

Sunday, 6/12

We woke up at 3:30 a.m. after only three to four hours of sleep. As I mentioned in the previous log, Rose, our house sitter, managed to get us to LAX in plenty of time to be body scanned, passport checked, and packed onto a plane headed for Montreal, where we would have a several hour lay over before crossing the Atlantic. The five hour flight from USA to Canada was fairly uneventful. Greg and I shared three seats next to the window, no third party ever materialized. We had a gorgeous view of the snow-capped Rockies as we flew over Colorado. We munched on a pretty tasteless mozzarella sandwich we had purchased at the airport cafe for lunch. We enjoyed trying to decipher the flight attendants announcements in French. We watched two movies on the touch screens on the headrest in front of us, fancy new plane entertainment systems! When we finally arrived in Canada, the first country outside of the U.S. I have ever stepped foot in, we were pleased to find out that customs was a very simple procedure. Passport check, hand in a form and send you on to your connecting flight. No tricky questions, no mean authority figures, just pleasant French and English speaking Canadians. I think that everything is bit more palatable when spoken in French. Even their Canadian children, were positively charming playing rock, paper, scissors while waiting in the terminal. Our brusque American, "Rock, paper, scissors," chant that accompanies the game has no poetry. The lyrical song of the Canadian youths gave this old game new luster. The little I could see of Canada from the airport made me want to return some day; green trees in the distance, winding rivers we saw during our descent, and how we landed with blue skies that quickly turned ominous, a drenching rain storm rolled through and an hour later their was a blue sky punctuated by wispy clouds. It seems a beautiful place from the little we saw of it. We braved some more airport cafe food, trying a vegetable quiche that was at the very least, warm and gelatinous. Finally, we boarded the plane to Rome. Indeed we are learning that despite some online reviews by less than satisfied passengers, Air Canada is actually pretty cool. For the second time we couldn't believe our luck, when a third person didn't claim a seat next to us. This time in the center, Greg and I have left the seat between us empty, each of us having our own aisle and plenty of room for our pillows and blankets to make a sleepy pile between us. We were delighted to find these amenities on our seats because our experience with air travel over the last several years had lead us to believe that these only existed in first class and fairy tales of long ago. We were also surprised by a hot meal and a complimentary glass of wine. Are you kidding? This is too cushy for coach! The warm tea with milk served after the hot meal helped to melt away any stress that remained from the previous day. Now I am about to curl up and catch a little nap, hopefully waking much closer to our Italian portion of this holiday. Ciao!

Mel, enjoying the in-flight entertainment system.

Greg, beginning to feel the effects of three hours sleep during our lay over in Montreal.