Back to the States!

March is finally here…John and I have been looking forward to March for a while now and we are glad it is finally here. His leave started March 3 and we flew out of Naples on March 4. However, March 4th was one of the worst days ever. No it wasn’t bad just the flights were not much fun at all. We woke up that morning around 4:15am (9:15pm March 3rd ~ TX time) to get ready to head to the airport. We flew out of the Naples International Airport at 7:10am so we had to leave the house around 5:15am to get parked and in line. The good thing about flying out Naples for us is that the Airport is right across the road from the Capo base (where John works). So we were able to park on base and just walk across the road, which also means we don’t have to pay for parking for the month we are gone.

Our first flight was about an hour long flight from Naples to Rome. That flight wasn’t bad at all we took off on time and landed on time. We had about a 1 ½ layover in Rome which was just enough time to get through the airport to the international terminal, go through customs, use the restroom, grab a bite to eat and board the plane. We got on the plane and the captain came over the system saying they were waiting on something to load and it would take about 10 min then we could leave. At this point I was exhausted so I fell asleep. The next thing I knew we were in the air finally. I asked John how long we had been flying and this is what I was told. “Well we took off an hour late but we are still supposed to land on time and we are about and 1 to an 1 ½ into the flight already.” So I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours or a little more. Which I wasn’t complaining. We both watched a movie and then it was time for the meal. When we got through eating I fell back to sleep for a couple more hours. John didn’t sleep hardly any on the flight and when I woke up again I didn’t sleep anymore and we still had 6 hours to go. That was the longest 6 hours ever, I didn’t think we were ever going to land. But we finally made it to Atlanta around 3pm (2pm TX time).

In Atlanta we had another 2 hour layover, so this was enough time to get through customs recheck our luggage and go back through security. Once we found our gate we decided to sit down and relax for a little bit so we found a little Bar that had an open seat so we sat there for about 30 min. We were reminded real fast that we were back in the States also. Bars actually mean alcohol and liquor and not a little coffee joint. The as we are ordering John orders a beer and was carded. Neither one of us has been carded once in Italy!!

We left Atlanta around 5:15pm and had a 2 ½ hour flight into Minneapolis. This flight wasn’t too bad either, John and I both stayed awake and read and played games. Once we landed in MSP we picked up our luggage (which ALL made it!!) and got the rental car and made the 1 ½ drive to St. Clair. We stopped in Mankato and grabbed Wendy’s (it was so good lol) then stopped by his friends Joe and Eric house for about 30 min to say hi. Once we finally made it to his house it was about 10:30pm that night which was 25 hours after we woke up.

We were both so happy to see a bed that we passed out, the only bad part was our bodies were still on Italy time so we were both up and ready to go around 7 7:30 that morning. Lets just say trying to get adjusted to the time change is not easy.

The next morning I took these pictures from around John’s moms house. We went from about 65* weather to 20* weather and all this snow. I have never seen so much snow before and everyone here is telling us that a bunch of it had already melted away.