Andiamo in Italia

Andiamo in Italia!  Let's go to Italy!  That's what I wrote on the blackboard in our kitchen as we prepared to embark on another adventure.

Are we actually going?  We planned this trip so long ago that it doesn’t seem real.  But yesterday we were packing, one suitcase and one carry-on apiece, trying to guess what might be needed for a five-week stay in a country where the weather is supposed to be rainy and cold in November.

 
And I am learning a few necessary phrases:

Buongiorno – good morning (not too dissimilar from bonjour, after all)
Grazie – thank you
Prego – you’re welcome
Mi scusi – excuse me (especially useful for poor Italian pronunciation)
Dové il bagno? – where is the bathroom?
Il conto per favoré – check, please
Arrivederci – farewell until we meet again

And of course:

Vino della casa blanco and vino della casa rosso.  We met a woman at the Highlands Wine Shoppe who had just returned from Florence and knew the city well, and she told us to always ask for the house wine, which is not the cheap poor-quality wine you might get in this country, but the very good local Italian wine, which is also inexpensive.

Cin-cin!

We drove on this cloudy Sunday morning to the Holiday Inn near Charlotte Douglas International Airport, where we have stayed on past overseas trips.  You can park your car safely there at a rate comparable to all the other parking lots near the airport and they have a free shuttle to and from the airport, which I remember from past trips was most welcome when arriving jet-lagged late at night after a ten-hour flight and a six-hour time difference. 

 All night we heard the sound of aircraft taking off, one after another – according to the internet, 672 flights per day, 28 per hour, or about every two minutes on average. We dreamt about flying high in the sky across wide shining oceans.