We had all packed. And unpacked. And repacked. And organized and thought and decided. And with our suitcases and carry-ons in tow, we arrived separately at the airport, Derek and Courtney first.
Things Matt and Carrie learned: arrive even earlier than you ever would think you need to. Sometimes you spend 25 minutes waiting at the ticket counter while the nice Delt@ lady tries to verify your return flight. Who cares if you might miss your actual flight due to early boarding?! At least you can make it back from Italy--well, if you actually make it onto the flight to get there...
Things Courtney and Derek learned: if you are pulled aside to do the "pat down" at the airport, make sure the person stamps your ticket. This time it was a very official christmas tree stamp that needed. If you don't have said stamp they'll refuse you entrance onto the plane and make you go back and get a stamp before you can board.
Fortunately, we all successfully made it on the plane to Atlanta. We joked the whole time about how our flight was like "Christmas Eve" because it wasn't quite the whole actually-in-another-country thing, but was the precursor to it :) Derek and Carrie had never been to Europe, though Courtney and Matt had, so I'd guess they were even more like kids on Christmas Eve!
We arrived in Atlanta, figured out where to go next, and then we hit up Sweetwater's airport restaurant for our last bit of American food and for some good ol' Georgia Brown and Sweetwater Blue brews. MMM. We figured this would help us feel like it was "night" like it was in Italy, and maybe ease some of the anxiety about the loooong flight ahead of us.
Our fancy fare: nachos and a hotdog. We also had sandwiches. :)
There was a plus side to Matt and Carrie's crazy check-in process--their return flight was now different, and better than before because it only had one connections. So Courtney and Derek switched to be on the same return flight, and then we all boarded the plane. We were kind of pumped for them to be checking our PASSPORTS! Excuse the disheveledness of our appearance--it was late/early, we were slightly tipsy and it had already been a looooong day.
There's a funny thing about international flights: they don't force you to feel as though you're in another time zone. We ate our dinner at like 8pm Eastern time. Which is like 2am Italy time. Why didn't they feed us right when we hopped on? No idea. But they didn't. So Carrie caught a little nap while everyone else watched movies on the fun mini-screens in front of us. And then we ate. And for airline food it was actually quite good--both the chicken and the pasta. Hot, yummy and with bread and veggies and a salad? Not too shabby, not too shabby at all. ps: sorry for the grainy photo. I was trying not to bother my neighbors with a flash!
Though we do want to know: what the heck is that red cup for?
Oh and? The free beer on the flight was pretty nice, too!
Then came the sleeping. And the waking up over France (and seeing it out the window and pointing and saying, "Holy cow, that's FRANCE!"), and a little more sleeping.
And then we landed. And that was the beginning of Monday, which we'll cover next!
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