Livin' la vida Aloha: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

We said "aloha" to Hawaii with excitement for our 3-week European journey ahead of us, but also with a bittersweet sorrow in leaving the place that we have called home for 6 years.

Ah, the airplane. I, of course, was freezing cold, but we were tired and ready to sleep during the overnight flight to LAX. Nick was prepped with eye drops, nose drops, tylenol, and chapstick. I was prepped with Winter gear...haha! We were headed to LAX, Chicago, and Rome...all in one day. Wee-hoo.

I'll mention here how much it irks me when people don't cover their cough, or even when they cover it, but with their hand...especially when on an airplane. YUCK! They must have skipped preschool. Sneezes go into the elbow...duh.

Okay, here we are. Three airplane rides down and approximately 15 hours into travel...which time zone are we in?... finally made it onto the train from the Rome airport to the main train station. We were trying to catch our train from Rome to Florence.

Well, we missed the train from Rome to Florence and had to take a later one, which is fine...except that the town shuts down for a few hours in the middle of the day and we needed to pick up our rental car in Florence to start our drive through Tuscany. Rental car places shut down, as well. Haha! So we found the nearest cafe and sat down to the lovely lunch that you see above. Meanwhile the rental car guy was hanging out on the street corner smoking. You know...When in Rome...except we were in Florence.

When the smoke break finished, we got our car, which was bigger than I had imagined it was going to be. I was thinking more "Mr. Bean" style. My dreams were crushed, but the Peugeot with the silver lion on the back was pretty awesome.

And so we began our drive. We made it (by the grace of God) out of Florence and were officially on the autostrada! We found an Italian radio station that played an interesting mix of Italian pop and American 90's classics. One of our favorite Italian songs went a little something like this," I just wanna break free...and I'm thanking you for nothing." HAHAHA...I think they meant, "Thanks for nothing."

Check out my hunky driver! That's how they're built in Italy.

Here's a castle that I saw from the road. Pretty cool, right? The only castle I saw from the side of a road in America had a mini-golf attached to it.