Italy!

Hi guys! I am in Italy! Yay!
Getting here, however, was quite difficult. As you know, my dad is a pilot, so my family can ride on passes, meaning if there are empty seats on a plane, we can take them for free. Basically, we are called "non-revs" which probably means something like non-reserved. Anyway, our plan was to go from Seattle to Atlanta, and then to Milan. We picked these flights becaause they had plenty of open seats (or so we thought.) Anyway, we started driving to Seattle at 3 in the morning, and got there at 5ish. Everything went fine, we parked the car, went through security (a 35 min wait, argh) and waited for the flight. Airlines are authorized to oversell flights, because theyhave an estimated number of people that won't show up. However, we were unlucky, as most everyone showed up. Therefore, we didn't get on :( However, there was another flight an hour and a half later, which we waited for. It looked as if we would miss that flight too, but there was one last seat open. Fortunatly, as a pilot, my dad can ride in a seat in the cockpit called the jumpseat. So I got to sit in the middle of two other people I didn't know in coach. For 5 hours. AAAAAAAAAAAAA! Oh well, it wasn't all that bad. We held for an hour for weather though, so we were very late for our next flight when we landed. We raced to the gate it was departing from, and missed it by littirally 5 mins. We had just missed the last flight to Italy that day. Not good news. Anyway, I should go, but will continue the story later. Can't you wait ;)
2nd installment:
Finally got around to posting. So much to do!
Anyway, we had to stay the night in Atlanta. Luckly, my dad knew of a hotel that wasn't bad, so we stayed there and had mexican food in the hotel resturant. Can't get any mexican food in Italy though :( Well, duh. For breakfast we went to this little place called the Barbecue Kitchen, which is a funny little place. VERY different from where I live. But the food was good, and it was a fun experiance. Then, we headed back to the airport, to hopefully fly to New York, then to Milan. To our relief, we got on the flight, and in first class! Yay! They had just upgraded the TV system too, so you could pick from like 10 movies and 20 TV shows to watch, as well as about 15 games. Yay! I was almost sad when we arrived in New York just an hour and a half later. We strolled around the airport for a while, got a bite to eat, and then went to our gate. First Class again! Yay! Actually, it is "Buisness Elite" when going international. But they had the old TVs where you couuld only pick from a couple movies, and couuld not pause them. Still, it was great! I got to choose what food to get, and it was fairly good too! After just 7 hours, we were in Italy! However, now we had two problems on our hands. First, becuase we had missed some flights and spent the night, finding our luggage was difficult. However, an hour later, we had rounded it all up. The other problem was finding a way to get to our villa, about an hour's drive away. We had Initially planned on taking a bus and then a train to a town just minutes from the villa, but, as we later found out, a strike had taken place, just for that day, and The buses and trains wern't operating! Luckly, we were able to find someone to take us to our villa. We were finally here! We met my mom, sister, nad grandmother there, and I set to exploring the house.
We are staying in a large house/villa, with basically four storys. It sleeps ten, our group consist of 7 (my aunt and uncle came the next day.) The first floor has a kitchen, dining room, and two sitting rooms. The next level has two bedrooms, one of which I am sharing with my sister. The next floor has two bathrooms and two more bedrooms. The 4th floor is up a spiral staircase, with the laundry room, a couch type thing, and two more beds. All in all, it is a pretty great place. Also, behind our villa is a little beach where we can go swimming.
To access the villa, you walk down several switchbacks and staircases, in a jungle-like area. It is very cool. At the top of this path (our villa is at the bottom) you reach a gate, which leads either to the road and our garage (we have a rental car) or down a path to the little town down the road. We go there every day to pick up groceries. Although there is a mini-mart place, we get groceries from the beakery, the butcher, and the fruit and vegatable stand. it is odd to get things at all these different places, but I like it. From the village, you can take a ferry to anywhere on Lake Maggiore, the lake we are staying on. Figuring out the scedule was a pain, but I think we have mostly got it. There are many little ferries, and a hydrofoil ferry that is extremly fast, but doesn't go much. I rode it for the first time today, and it is amazing. It is nearly three times as fast as the other boats.
There are also several great resturants in town. We went our our first night, and also our third. However, the third night, we went to an extremly fancy resturant. The food was good, but their specialy that night was mushrooms, which I hate. Also, as a little appetizer, they served a bit of risotto with a calamari (squid) sauce. And they wanted me to try it. And I hate seafoood besides some fish. I took a little bite, and although the taste wasn't bad, the texture of the ground squid was. um, "bleh"! All the little squid bits were really slimy and scary. YUK! But the food after, the tomato soup and steak, were really good. And so was the dessert. But now the battery on the laptop is low, and this post is really long. Anyway, I will post later, and try to at least induvidually e-mail pics, if not post them. But this is a dail-up connection, so I am not sure how slow it will be. Like, only way to slow, or maybe insanely, bloodcurdleingly slow. Probably the second one. Oh well, at least there is a connection at all.
Anyway, see you guys later!
El