Back in the U S A

But still not home.

We are in Brooklyn as part of a layover at JFK..my layover is 22 hours, Steve's is 14. We are staying at Steve's brothers and wife's place who picked us up at rush hour. Our flight back was on Alitalia. Italian airline food much better than American airline food and I got to watch Italian cinema: favorite..La Grande Bellezza which won an Oscar for best foreign movie. Such imagery! A montage of fantastic scenes of Rome with interesting music. The last scene with hundreds of migrating flamingos on the main characters terrace overlooking the Colosseum was unforgettable. See the movie if possible. If not, google image search grande Bellezza  flamingos. see below

The iPad did come in handy for our trip. We bought various adapters to upload photos from Steve's camera, my camera and the iPhone (this iPhone will be retired shortly). Every evening we'd spend time downloading photos, selecting the best, and editing them while I drank my spritzi. I also bought the chief ingredient for spritzi, Aperol, assuming it survives the baggage handlers, I will make them for anyone who visits me. The Moms will get a taste at our upcoming group. About half way into the trip, the iPad was full so lots of culling and removing apps. Somehow I can't remove music that ended up on the iPad, which would give me room for 200 to 300 photos. Steve's photos can be 8 mb a piece.

  And we got to sit together. I was nervous I didn't have a seat on the plane as Deltas computers don't sync well with Alitalias. And I am on an overbooked commuter jet to fly home. I put in my bid to give up my seat..we will see if they take it ($500)

This is what happens when you try to use miles and the cheapest seats on a given flight..a whole hodgepodge.  

So back to the land of readily available wifi.  Our last night was at an airport hotel whose free advertised wifi was so weak, I couldn't load even one photo. They said I would have to pay more for the good wifi...they are in for a bad review. And this was one of our priciest hotels. Fortunately Malpensa had strong wifi along with cute shops. We got there early as I was so nervous about having no seat and no way to check in. Delta, who made the reservation, no help. And once we were there, Alitalia was very helpful though they put Steve's luggage tag on mine and vica versa so I am in for a treat when I recheck my bag at JFK. Steve managed to fix it for himself.

We had a great trip. I hate typing on an iPad and the app is not user friendly. In time I will edit these posts and add photos. We stored 1000 on this iPad alone. We couldn't load many of Steve's as the files were too big but once we have a good computer I can post.

Steve on the stairs up to the Roman ruins in Verona

Verona

Me getting lucky with Juliette

Flamingo scene in La Grand Belleza