Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Twelve hours later...finally in Rome

Ciao from Roma! Finally made it here after twelve long hours.

My flight was supposed to leave Newark at 5:50pm on Monday night, but the plane was late getting in so we didn't leave until around 6:30. The flight itself was really smooth and it actually went by quicker than I thought. I felt like they were constantly feeding us -- they gave us a drink, snack, dinner, drink, breakfast, and drink. And surprisingly, the food wasn't too bad. The girl sitting next to me was on her way to Israel to study there for a year. She already studied there last year, and was going back for another...she was nice, but about an hour into the flight she pulled out a bunch of Tupperwear from her bag and started eating a multi-course meal. The worst part of it was, it was tuna salad! Who does that?? Especially on a plane?? I am still wondering about that one. It made the whole cabin smell...so gross. Anyway though, the plane was a double decker plane which I have never seen before, so there were a lot of people aboard.

I didn't get a picture of my plane, but it was one of these:



Once we landed in Frankfurt, I had a three hour layover. Luckily my friend Kelly was flying with me so I had someone to talk to...we even met a few other students at the airport who are also studying abroad in Rome this semester (but are not in our program.)

The flight from Frankfurt to Italy was nice and short (only 1.5 hours.) While we flew, we were treated to views of the Swiss Alps like this:


So pretty!

The landing in was a little too rough for my liking -- as we were making our descent we went through a bunch of huge puffy clouds which caused a lot of turbulence and at one point we were kind of thrashed to the right side of the plane...not cool. Mom, you would have died of fright! Haha. It was actually kind of fun though, it felt like a rollercoaster. These two flights eased my fears of flying a lot...I think the only reason why I didn't like it before was because I didn't do it often. I still hate taking off though!

After the landing we made our way through the airport to get our luggage. I found that my main checked suitcase had a slash in the top that wasn't there before...a lot of my clothes were visible! Luckily I didn't lose anything, but my school program director who picked us up from the airport suggested that I file a complaint with Lufthansa, so I went and got the paperwork from the customer service desk and I have to call them and give them the information so they can hopefully replace the bag.

Once we had met our group, we were driven to our apartments -- my three roommates were already at mine so I met them as soon as I got there. They are really nice, and we are all getting a long really well so far.

Also, my apartment is so awesome -- it's way nicer and larger than I expected, and it's in the greener outskirts of the main part of Rome so it's very residential, which is a nice change from downtown.

I will post pictures of it tomorrow and also talk about the dinner we had tonight...I am too jet lagged to type it out now (I only got 15 minutes of sleep since Sunday night...I didn't do so well sleeping on the plane!)

1 comments:

linanne said...

I'll be checking this blog alot Danielle, so happy your apartment is good. Your picture of the alps is beautiful. It should be such a wonderful experience seeing how the other side of the world lives. Love Aunt Linda, Uncle Butch