33 hours awake and counting!

Picture it... San Bruno, California, six hours before our scheduled wake up call to head to the airport...

We checked our standby status and found that the flight we wanted to go on was completely full, so we switched our flight to two hours earlier... turns out that was a wise choice because ended up making it to Chicago... just barely. Nothing thrilling happened in our four hour layover in Chicago except for a woman trying to get on the Chicago-Rome flight as we were. She was also flying standby and was offered business class... yes, we were eavesdropping... but the offer was then reneged when they determined she was not in dress code compliance. She then A. said, "I thought this would count since the t-shirt sparkles." and B. burst into tears saying, "I'm not going! I'm not going to sit back there in coach with all those people!" It was GOOD entertainment.

Just a short nine and a half hours, one can of tomato juice for me, two diet cokes for SEA, one viewing of National Lampoon's Vacation, and two ineffective Benadryls later... we landed in Rome. It had been a long night, which was then followed by a very frustrating meeting of Shandon and Laura vs. the international pay phone. As it stands, Shan&L - 0, international pay phone - 1. We gave up and called Shandon's relatives on her cell phone.

Next on the agenda was a four hour train from Rome to Venice. Air conditioned and everything. It was JUST like flying business class... I assume. :) When we got picked up at the train station from Shandon's cousin, we had a little lesson in making do with a major language barrier. I kept quiet in the backseat and enjoyed the dramatic game of charades that was happening in the front.

Sooo anyway... we are now safely at Aunt Dolly's, after a late night dinner at cousin Pier Paulo's and Skyping a video with Grandpo Sonny. If you were following along and happened to be counting, you would see that equals 33 hours of being awake.

Good night!