Well the day to leave for Rome finally came, and it was pretty surreal to think that I am going to be 5000? Miles away from home for 4 months. It was ‘twenty four ish’ hour travel day (with time changes) since we left my house in Chicago at about noon January 6th and finally got out of the airport in Rome at about noon on the 7th. It included an overnight flight from O’Hare to Dublin and finally into Rome. The flight to Dublin was pretty uneventful. Once in Dublin I was surprised that in a rather large liquor store in the airport I couldn’t find any Guinness beer! The one odd thing that we did find was that at Burger King you could upgrade your meal to an “adult meal” which rather than giving you a bigger drink, you got a pint of Budweiser. I know taco bell just started doing that in the United States but I’ve never heard of Burger King doing it in america at least, and with an American beer rather than a beer Native to their country. Anyway, after a weekend with Kelsey, Jeannie, and hunter, I couldn’t get Justin Beiber’s new song Love Yourself out of my head. I feel kind of weird listening to Justin Beiber without a girl in the first place but it just kept going around and around in my head, thanks Kelsey and Jeannie….. (And no I don’t own his album, but I just happened to have a playlist on Spotify that I had offline that had a few of his songs on it)
On the Dublin to Rome leg of the trip I had a window seat and got to see the sun rise over the clouds which was pretty breathtaking. I also made my first purchase with euros on the plane by buying some Irish beer called Crean’s on the plane at about 8:30 am Rome time while watching the sunrise! (And to justify drinking that ‘early,’ it felt like only 1:30 am Chicago time) Other than that, everything was pretty normal, we had no trouble getting through the airport or getting our luggage.