Arrival

Sono in Italia! I am here….I’ve arrived safe, sound, and in one piece.

I was offered an earlier flight from Killeen, which was ideal as, originally, I had only an hour and 15 minutes to change planes provided all flights were on time. I was a tad worried that my hefty luggage wouldn’t make it onto my flight from Dallas to Frankfurt, Germany, but fate intervened and all was well.

My seatmate on the overseas flight was a blonde haired, blue-eyed, handsome German man who is working in Mexico. He was very friendly and personable, a fact I did not discover until we were 9 hours 15 minutes into a 9 hour 30 minute flight, but if I had to snuggle in close proximity to someone for 9 hours, I am certainly glad it was him….he was warm and soft on a very long, cold flight.

The sunrise out the tiny window was spectacular. It was as though the God’s hand painted a rainbow banner of colors from a vivid blood red, to grass green, to rich indigo across the sky with the most intensely colored crayons. I was welcomed to the first leg of my journey by beauty unlike any I had ever seen. A good sign!

I successfully located the ticket kiosk and secured the boarding pass for my connecting flight to Florence, after which I negotiated Security and was treated to the most intimate exploration of my person I had ever experienced from someone who hadn’t bought me dinner first.

After an extended 5 hour wait in Frankfurt I boarded a cramped aircraft to Florence. I was pleased to notice my large carry on fit into the overhead bin and there was an extra 2 inches of leg room I wasn’t expecting. Once I attempted to seat myself I quickly realized why there was 2 inches of extra legroom…it was because they’d removed 2 inches of width from each seat. For a moment I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t actually going to fit, but after a series of uncomfortable and ungainly heaves and wiggles I managed to insinuate my ample behind into the seat, however the strain on my hands from attempts to fasten my seatbelt caused a painful reoccurrence of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.

Other than my relative inability to breathe and the fact that I had to cross my arms I Dream of Jeanie style so as not to crowd my neighbor, the rest of the flight proceeded without incident. Until, that is, I realized that in the process of fitting (notice I didn’t say “sitting”) in the vise-like seat, portions of my hips and thighs had oozed out under the arm handles. My crossed arms were restraining my pudgy “muffin top”, but I had developed an alarming case of “muffin bottom”. How on earth was I going to extricate myself from this vile implement of torture? Just as the law of Physics allows a too small ring to be placed on a finger, but not to be removed without a quarter cup of butter, I had a sinking feeling that a similar form of removal might have to be applied to me. I blushed in embarrassment at the imagined horror of an emergency call to the fire department from the horrified (and no doubt amused) flight crew. If I was going to be rubbed down with a pound of butter by hose swinging, yellow hip-wader wearing members of the Italian fire department, it sure as heck wasn’t going to be aboard Lufthansa flight 4062!

In the end, I grasped the seat in front of me firmly and hoisted myself, more of less gracefully, out of the clamp-like seat while my seatmate, a runner-up in last year’s Ichabod Crane look-a-like contest, carefully averted his eyes just as I had politely averted mine when he inserted an exploratory finger into his right nostril mid-flight.

A cold rain greeted me in Florence, and an unhelpful woman appeared to charge my credit card for the car rental I’d already paid for online. Of course, she kept my printed receipt. I decided to wait and deal with that issue when I return the car in Arezzo.