Plane reservations have been made!

When we started to make specific plans on our move to Italy last summer one of the details to consider was airfare. Valerie gets several email notices related to travel, since she had worked so many years in the industry, and last summer she received a couple touting deals on transatlantic cruise ship crossings. Some of these deals were comparable to airfares we had seen.

Now, cruising is one of my favorite vacations, even though it wasn't always that way. When we took our first cruise along the western Mexican coast I had to literally be talked into it. I had always been the kind of person who thought I wanted to be on the move doing things all the time on vacation. Lounging by the pool or on the deck with a book, eating lots of great food, seeing new ports everyday and seeing live shows every night - that is now the life for me.

So... taking a cruise for 2 weeks across the Atlantic sounded like a great way to ease into our new life, spend some extra time working on my Italian, and the added benefit that cruise lines do not have the same luggage restrictions as airlines. Unfortunately, as the summer proceeded the prices on these cruises doubled to twice the cost of airfare, so we decided flying would be the best option, and we'll just have to pay the extra charges for added luggage

The next thing we had to consider was where do we fly from. We planned to leave from Ohio so this provided several airport options: Cleveland, Detroit, Columbus. Also should we get unrestricted flights, one-way or roundtrip? Valerie painstakingly searched all the different options and configurations and this afternoon we booked our flights through a consolidator.

We will be leaving from Cleveland on April 19. This total flight time is about 13 hours, sure a big change for us since our previous flights from Albuquerque have all meant close to 20 (or more) hours of travel we had to endure before getting to Italy.

The flights are booked, we are on our way!