The days ahead

Ok so we are just a couple of days away from Italy 2011.  Here is the break down. 
This time we will be going primarily to Cinque Terra, staying in the village of Vernazza  and then to Venice, one week in each. But of course non revenue travel can kick your butt so we start a couple of days early in order to make sure we can make our reservation, but in doing so we find that we have new wants. Those wants show up as our friends from our last Italy trip in the form of Anna and Fiorenzo. Anna tells me about a month or so a go that they will get married the last week in September. So now we would like to get to Lucca for a couple of days of fun with them. So at this writing we will be traveling on Saturday the 27^th of August from DFW to London's Heathrow and then we will see if British airways can get us to Pisa on Sunday the 28^th or must we stay with the brits for a night and take the 29^th BA flight out.  All of this will soon be known to all and be in our history.....but for now.....nobody knows. As we find out from everything from the internet to friends in "the know"  London's Heathrow is a madhouse, and the fact that we are trying to make an hour and 20 min connection between AA's terminal 3 to BA's terminal 5............"are you crazy....there is no way!"  That is the concensis.....sad really....but such is life.  Soooo what can one do but leave a day early just in case.  Now let's be clear here....our reservations in Vernazza are on Wednesday, we gave ourselves 2 extra days to get there for those reservations.  But as I said the "wants" won over the thought of "you can still make your reservations in Vernazza".  All we could hear was," but we will miss the fun in Lucca".  So it is all BA's fault.  If they had more than one flight out a day, or if they had had the good sense to make it an hour or so later in the day....please really....what were they thinking, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. So because of the insensitive planning on their part we have to leave another day early................HOW RUDE!

And by the way, for any of you that didn't hear the wonderful story of Anna and Fioenzo.  They are a wonderful Italian couple that live in Lucca Italy.  We met on our last trip to Italy.  In my continued quest for all things fun, I decided to learn as much of the Italian language as I could before our trip.  As you all know I have been mangleing our language for years so why not another language, why not Italian.  So on my quest for all things Italian I found a wonderful website called Livemocha.com   This is a wondeful free site for learning any language, and in that learning spree I found Anna.  She helped me with Italian and I with her English, however I must say she helped me much more than I could ever help her with English....she knows it very well.  But they opened their hearts and home to us.  We had dinner out and at their home, they took us on a wonderful trip to Rome and soooo very much, much more.  I can't believe what a wonderful adventure this relationship has been and continues to be.  As a side note, my mom took on the task of making the wedding gift for my wonderful Italian friends.  With very short notice I was hoping that my mom could make them a couch quilt.  Not only did she make a fantastic couch quilt she even stiched an Italian message of good wishes for them on the quilt.  I got it in the mail in record time and just talked with Anna and they were even on time.  They recieved the quilt the very day the US mail said they would.....Go America!  Anna was so thrilled.  She couldn't believe that my mom could do this for them.  But they don't know my mom.  One day I hope they do meet and they will know what everyone knows.