Italy: Day 1 - The Flight Over

Our 5,500-mile, Missoula-to-Minneapolis-to-New York-to-Rome series of flights began well before sunrise with a 5 a.m. trip to the airport. The upside was each flight was on a plane that had individual video screens for each seat. And there was a good selection of movies and TV shows. I did catch a couple of fun movies. 

Among them was A Christmas Story Christmas, a 2022 sequel to the original 1983 Christmas Story classic. It featured most of the actors from the first movie - Ralphie, Flick, Scut Farkus and gang. I also watched Facing Nolan, a pretty cool documentary about baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan as told by Ryan, his family members, teammates, coaches and those he faced. 

The other upside was the New York-Rome leg not only included the usual drink and small snack option but also a meal. I honestly can't remember the last time I was served a meal on a plane. It had probably been 30 years ago. Shoot, maybe it was when I returned home as a missionary back in 1983. It really wasn't anything to write home about but it smelled good, tasted okay and hey, we were hungry. I went with the four-cheese ravioli-veggies-lemon bar choice.  

The downside of flying to the other side of the world was well, it was an all-day/all-night flight. For a guy like me who really can't sleep on a plane (or car or anything where I can't lay down), no matter how tired I am, that meant getting little to no rest on each of the three flights.

The configuration of the plane thought was nice because our row was only two seats wide so it was just Lori and me. I was glad we didn't have to sit in the middle section of four seats that really seemed jammed together. Once I was too tired to watch anything, I just kept the flight tracker pulled up so when I did open my eyes, I could see where in the world we were.