Pizza for dinner

Yum!!

Arrival

I must have walked 2 miles inside the Paris airport. Don't they have shuttles or something? After the first mile, I thought maybe I had gone the wrong way somewhere but when I saw a couple other people from my flight heading the same way for transfer I was reassured that yes indeed, transferring planes at Paris Charles de Gaulle is in fact an Olympic sport.

...and then a 3 mile bus ride to a remote airfield where the mini planes reside.

...now in Imola. It's foggy.  Going to lunch now. Apparently, I'm supposed to speak Italian. I hope I remember how.

Departure - at JFK

This terminal is surprisingly international. Of course there's the requisite duty free at the entrance but I was impressed by the multilingual workers there. I heard some Mandarin, French and possibly Dutch.  For food choices, in addition to the hot dog stand, offerings include sushi, baklava and others.  It's a good representation of what NYC has to offer.  I approve!

Just got on the plane. It's the A380 and it's super nice. I have a window seat and next to me there are little side compartments which basically means I have and extra 5 inches of arm room and a little window sill for my stuff. How cozy!! They also have varying sizes of overhead compartments.  We had to search for a super roomy one for my bag.  But it was a pleasant experience as the stewardess (steward? M?) was French and very pleasant.

It's so good to hear people speaking French. I need to head back to France again soon, before I get too rusty. Maybe next trip will be Bordeaux wine country - anyone interested?

Planning

Well, it's more like pre-planning. I'm only at the thinking about planning stage. I'll be heading over to Italy this weekend and staying for a week. The highlights of the week will be the road trip to Austria/Germany and then Pork Day. The road trip part is one big ?. We'll see. I'll try to update as often as possible.

As for Pork Day - this mythical pork day, I've heard about this for years now. A friend of mine showed me a documentary he made of this fantastic day every year when his family and several other families get together to butcher a pig and make yummy pig parts. It's apparently all inclusive with ribs, pancetta, lard, prosciutto, pig tails, pig ears, etc. I'm super excited about this. This pork day is really the ultimate motivation for my trip. The rest is just icing :)

Keep an eye out for postings from my European trip, starting soon!