Europe 2013 - Heading out Tomorrow

Across the Ocean We Go

Hello Friends and Family!

Linda and I are heading out for our trip to Italy and Germany.  On this trip we will be revisiting some places that we have been in the past, but they were great and worth another visit.  In the case of Rome and Berlin, you can visit them many times and see something new each time.  The bike riding in Tuscany is very nice as well, it doesn’t get old to pull into a village and take a break after riding down a country road and enjoying magnificent scenery.  Because the hotel in Tuscany is right on the beach, we can take a dip in the Mediterranean each day after the ride.

Rather than write a summary of how the trip over to Rome went after we arrive, I will just go over how it is supposed to go.  When we get there, we will be pretty groggy and incoherent from the flights and the time zone change, so we will probably be more focused on just going to bed.  We will catch up with you again after our first day of touring Rome.

We will be flying on an airline we have never used before, "Air Berlin", but since one of our destinations was Berlin, and the rates were very good, it seemed like a natural choice.   It will be interesting to see how they stack up against the airlines that we are more used to, I am hopeful and optimistic that it will be a pleasant flight.  We both have plenty of reading material, so we are not relying on any type of inflight entertainment, between reading and napping we should do OK.

Our flight over is from LA (LAX) going non-stop from LA to Berlin, we take off at 2:55pm on Friday the 6^th, and land at 11:00am on Saturday the 7^th (European time).  We are actually landing at the smaller airport in Berlin, but that is kind of nice, since smaller airports usually mean shorter times waiting for just about everything.  At 2:40pm we take off from Berlin and land in Rome at 4:45pm, this flight being just about 2 hours.

The Rome international airport is outside of Rome in a small town called Fiumicino.  The ‘Aeroporti di Roma’, actually has a rather brief name, considering that it is Italian, “Aeroporto Internazionale Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino”.  It is, buried within the name of the airport, that the name for the next phase of our journey is the “Leonardo Express”.  I am sure that many English speaking people landing at the Rome airport and wanting to go to downtown Rome bypassed the Leonardo Express as an option, because Rome is mentioned nowhere in the name, only to take a taxi ride they will regret for years to come (expensive and completely nuts).

We already have our tickets for the Leonardo Express in our backpacks, so all we have to do is pick up our luggage (oh please, please let it be there), scurry through the airport to the train terminal (you can walk from your plane to the train without getting wet if it is raining), and hop on the Leonardo Express.  No worries about which stop to get off of the train either, there is only one, Roma Termini, the other end of the line for the Leonardo Express.

From the Termini train station it is a couple of blocks walk to get to the Bed and Breakfast where we will be staying.  It is in an old building, actually in this part of town they are all kind of old, but the floor with the B&B (BBQueen) has been completely renovated and it is actually a pretty modern style.  We stayed here a couple of years ago and it had all of the things that really mattered, a comfortable bed, clean floors, a bathroom of your own, breakfast in the morning, & a coffee machine that you can operate on your own in case your body is insisting that 3:00am is the time that you should be waking up.  You get over the 3:00am wakeup in a couple of days as long as you are careful not to take a 2 to 3 hour nap in the afternoon.

So once we get to the BBQueen, we may or may not get a bite to eat if the local grocery store is open, and go to bed for the night.  Sunday is our first day of getting out and seeing Rome, we are pretty excited about it.

We should have some access to internet and email throughout the trip, but not through our phones.  Text messages and voice calls cost a lot, so we are pretty much internet only until we get back the first week in October.  Will try to keep you all posted on what is going on with the blog.  We will be checking and answering our email.

We hope you have a great week ahead, with any luck the next post will be from Italy!

Stephen & Linda

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