Wings!

My flight left D.C. around 7pm on a Monday and I was due to arrive in Rome around 9:30am on Tuesday (Italy is 6 hours ahead). I couldn't sleep on the plane, even though I felt utterly exhausted most of the flight. At some point after watching "Finding Nemo" (the only decent choice for 'entertainment'), I pressed the map button to see where in the world I was. The graphic showed our happy little plane off the coast of Limerick, Ireland, so I opened my window to have a look. Of course it was mostly clouds since we were over 35,000 feet up, but I did catch the sunrise.

This picture freaks me out a bit since it looks like an engine fire or something, but at the time I thought it was one of the most amazing things I had seen. Later, I would stare out the window, until light turbulence kicked in -- it made me feel ill to see the wing kind of bending up and down so I would pull the window shade and either play my mp3 player (always Interpol's newest) or cry.

Even though it was daytime, looking at the wing also reminded me a bit of "Twilight Zone: The Movie." You know the part.

Watching this clip, I just had a revelation. THIS must be where my flying phobia came from! It still freaks me out -- after all these years. Enough of that!

I would go back to the map and was especially interested in the south of France, because I knew then it wasn't much farther. Here is a smaller jet speeding beneath us.

How relieved was I when we landed? Fiumicino (also known as Leonardo da Vinci airport) is located at the ancient Roman seaport of Ostia Antica. It's never fun preparing for a landing over water, in this case the Tyrhennian Sea. The water gets closer and closer as we drop in altitude, we bank in this direction-and-that, seem to stall in mid-air, and then hit the ground. Dr. Stevens led me through the Italian soldiers with German shepherds, passport control, and customs. We emerged to a crowd of well-dressed people holding signs with passenger's names/companies on them. Farthest away was Francesca with a Randolph College sign. We joined the group of students who had already landed and waited for stragglers. Randolph alum Via showed me the simple ins and outs of the airport cafe, paying and holding my receipt out for a shot of espresso (actually called caffe). With a packet of sugar and the tiniest of spoons, I was set!