Safe Arrival!

Thursday morning, 5:00AM:  I am sitting in the Frankfurt airport, and I can't help but smile. I'm in GERMANY! Sure, I'm only here for 4 hours. But I'm in a new country where pretzels are everywhere and people are nice. It's also pretty early here--only 7am. It's nice to just sit and people watch.  The long flight was surprisingly comfortable. I dozed a bit, but was basically awake the entire 7 hours and 33 minutes we were airborne. Watched an opera, an Adele concert, and listened to the entire soundtrack of Les Mis. Can't complain! The food wasn't awful and the flight attendants were quite chatty and friendly with us. I'll probably hate myself a little later for not sleeping, but I'll do my best to stay awake and keep smiling.  Our layover was pretty long, so we all had time to walk around a bit. The area we were in was actually a special terminal for Lufthansa connecting passengers, so they had complementary drink machines in multiple lounges that gave 15 different coffee\caffeine related drink choices, and portioned them into perfect little espresso cups. YA. It was wonderful. I bought a pretzel for the connecting flight to Milan and my oh my, was it yummy. The was also loads of beer on tap at various stations around the terminal, but it was way too early in the morning, and I still have lots of transportation ahead of me. :) Thursday late morning, 9:30AM On another note, we just flew over the Swiss Alps. I cannot describe how beautiful they looked against the clouds and the blue sky. I definitely want spend some quality time in this part of the world if I can.  Thursday afternoon and evening: We finally made it to our destination! But not before stopping in some special places along the way from Milan to Venice.  We stopped in the city of Verona, about 2 hours from the Milan airport. In Verona of course is the famous balcony and statue of Juliet, of the famous Romeo and Juliet. Our tour guide explained how Shakespeare's tragedy was actually borrowed from an Italian true story, based off of two families: the Capulets and the Montagues. It is also the place where the movie "letters to Juliet" was filmed. They say if you write your name on the wall with the name of your significant other, your relationship will continue to thrive. People wrote on EVERYTHING: locks, walls, windows, doors, plants, gum--it was everywhere. Very cool to see. I would love to write more, but after having not slept for over 30 hours, it would be in my best interest to rest up for Venice tomorrow before I start writing gibberish.  We have a ferry ride in the morning to get there, and a gondola ride in the afternoon! Buona Notte!