22 March, 2016

0851, FL 370

All roads, they said, lead to Rome.  On the forthcoming adventure this holds true.  Today, however, the roads are flight paths, and we will only pass nearby Rome.  The destination is Paleromo, Sicily.  That is many hours and several thousand miles away from my seat onboard this 757 bound for Newark Liberty International.  There we have a three hour layover before an overnight flight to Rome.  Changing planes one more time we touch down at 1100, nearly twenty four hours after the journey began on an airport shuttle at 0330 mountain time.

The next month brings a trip into thousands of years of Mediterranian history, and immersion into the culture of Sicily and Southern Italy. For twenty-one days I am on tour with Overseas Adventure Travel.  Two weeks touring the isle will see history dating to the phoenecians and Greeks, and the traditional food and culture of the Sicilian people.  From Sicily we hop onto the mainland, and spend a week in the south of Italy.  I admit to not having researched much about this part of the trip.  This is the first timeI have been on an organized tour, and want to go into it with an open mind, ready to absorb what the itinerary has to teach me.  After the tour ends in Salerno, the road reaches Rome.  Five nights and four full days will feature the ruins of the Colessuem and Roman Forum, the seat of Catholicism at St. Peters and the Vatican, the bones of of the Cappucin Monks, and all the spelndor that is the nearly three thousand year old city. 

Leaving Rome and Italy we fly to Hamburg, Germany and stay four nights to visit the amazing Miniatur Wonderland.  This is the largest model railway in the world and I am more than a little excited to spend the majority of two days touring the models of Denmark, Germany, America, Switzerland, and the incredible Knuffigen Airport. 

A train to Cologne and the Rhine Valley will take us to Frankfurt for one night before flying back on the Lufthansa non-stop 747 to Denver.

For now the view is pure white as we ride the wind eastward at 600 mph, skimming through the hazy tops of the clouds that are covering the midwest today.  Just over two hours and 1200 miles to Newark, where we will perhaps engage in a bit of trainspotting on the North East Corridor before boarding the 767-400 that will carry us across the water towards a Mediterranean sunrise.

So, as the song says:  “Come along, now, come along with me.  Come along, come along and see . . . “