If you are reading this tonight (Wednesday, October 6th), then exactly 6 months from today you will be on your overnight flight to Rome, Italy. But if you don't see this until tomorrow (Thursday, October 7th), then exactly 6 months from now you will be arriving in Rome!
That's very exciting, but it also is making me very anxious since we don't have any plane or hotel reservations yet, and none of our plans are confirmed. We still have time, but prices keep going up, the U.S. dollar keeps going down, and the good hotel rooms are filling up fast.
But now for the good news - I have been trying to figure out how best to get around Italy. Italy's public transportation is great, but it is very time-consuming and tiring to travel by bus, train or taxi from place to place. Also, there are several of us and we will have loads of luggage to drag around with us everywhere we go. To make matters more difficult, we are traveling to Abruzzo which is in a remote part of Italy and which doesn't have a good rail or bus system - in fact, it's almost non-existent and very undependable. So, I have been emailing some of the "private drivers" and "transfer services" that I have found online, and most have been quick to respond but have been very vague, which is something that you will notice in Italians when you get there - they don't exactly pay attention to detail. But then I received a 2nd email response from one of the services that previously responded to me. This new response said: "I just noticed that your email was signed, Gale from Buffalo, NY. My entire family is from Kenmore, NY!" (For those of you not from Buffalo, Kenmore is a suburb of Buffalo - less than 10 miles away from us!). So that started an email correspondence back and forth, and without going into all the details of what we have arranged, we are now in good hands with an American girl named Melissa living in Rome, Italy! Che buona fortuna!
So now I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we are on our way to confirming all our plans, and soon we can make our flight arrangements and hotel reservations. I am in the process of preparing a packet that I will send or give to everyone by the end of the month, and it will have all the details of our trip along with estimated costs.
Tanti Baci,
Gale
