Ok ok Here is the beginning

Well, everyone who has patiently been waiting, and I guess to those of you who have not been so patient, here are the beginning pictures of our trip. These were taken the first couple days while we there and didn't have anything planned except getting over jet lag...which took Leann about 3 days and took me 1 night. (Awesome for me, except I was tied down by Leann's nausea from being so tired!) This is the flight from Wichita to Atlanta, and believe me, Leann and I were not smiling this big on our flight from Atlanta to Paris!

The flight from Atlanta to Paris took a long time. It was from about 5 pm to 3 am our time, which was all overnight since we were changing time zones. We were able to see a couple times Greenland or Iceland from outside our window, but not too many times because of the weather and distance. We ended up landing in Paris about 8 a.m. local time. We booked it through the airport as we only had about 100 minutes to get to our next flight. We were pretty worried about it since it was in an airport that we didn't know. We had to go out of customs and then go back through security which was crazy!!! Oh well, we got to see the whole airport and buy a magnet. This is the wing of the airport where we caught our flight. It was shaped like a big football almost and was really interesting to be in (not plain and boring like most of our airports).

We made it pretty quickly across the airport and had time to pick up some newspapers along the way! (Leann did the 5 finger lift on these becuase she couldn't find anyone to pay and saw other people just take them and leave. When she got back and told me they were free, I pointed out that the top of the paper had a label on it as to how much it cost! OOPS) Anyways, I was here reading it and it was amazing how much we could pick up even though neither of us took French. Oh, and an interesting thing was that Kathleen Sebelius (the governor of Kansas) was in the paper in Paris! I know she is considered for the cabinet of Obama, but still!

So, we boarded the plane and took off for Cavazale (which is where Titus and Angie live). It was a two and a half hour drive and neither Leann or I made it all the way without sleeping. Leann was out in about 20 minutes of the drive and got a couple hours of sleep almost. I ended up getting 15 minutes because when Leann woke up, she decided she needed to wake me up so that we could sleep that night. Aparently she thought I was asleep the whole time she was. This is the view out of their dining room window at the Swiss Alps!!! It was a beautiful sight and we got tons more pictures of them. There is just something about mountains that is calming and wonderful.

This view is also outside the same window shooting down the street. As you can see, all the satelite dishes are on the balconies, but what you can't see is that everyone puts their laundry out to dry on their balcony. Most people in Italy do not have dryers as there isn't a ventilation system to handle it in most buildings. Basically, if you get a drying and have it inside, it shoots all the moisture into the air of your house and things start dripping. (CRAZY!)

On Saturday in town, there is a market which is just a traveling band of merchants that go to different cities selling their goods. On every corner of the market there were bicycles lined up as everyone bikes places and doesn't drive, not to mention that this town is small enough that you can walk around it in an afternoon just for a stroll.

One of the wonderful things there was the fresh flowers. They were so cheap!!! Things that would have ended up costing $5o or more in the US was only $10 at the market. I ended up buying some flowers as Sunday was "Women's Day" in Italy. This is just the simple holiday where men go out and buy flowers for the women in their lives. Don't freak out too much ladies at saying how awesome that is becuase the typical flower that you buy is this weed looking thing kind of like dandylions (but really really small). The cost of it is $1 so it isn't that great, but the thought is there - right?
Here is the stand where you could buy fresh cheese (Formaggi) and Salami (Salumi). Everything was ready to eat there if you so wanted. The cheese is soooooo cheap there as well. we did end up buying some for our stay there because it was so cheap and we love cheese.

Fresh fruit was also everywhere and here was just a simple picture of the blood oranges on display.

One last thing we got from the market that day was fried seafood. It was a mixture of many different kinds of sea creatures like calamari and octopus and more things. It was very interesting and both Leann and I tried to Octopus. I didn't put the picture on here of the octopus, but it was a baby one where you could put the whole thing in your mouth in one bite. It was so wierd becuase you could count the legs on it before you popped it into your mouth, chewed as quickly as possible and swallowed in hopes it wouldn't revisit you later. It actually didn't taste bad as it was fried, so we weren't too worried.

All in all, the first few days were amazing and relaxing and full of a lot of sleep. I wish we could have done a little more exploring the town those first few days but it was better to get rested up so that we could be prepared for Venice on Monday!