How do you get from the United States to Italy?

So many of you in the United States may wonder how do you get to go to far away places like Italy..   how does that work?

We will review the basics of how me and my students got to Italy.

We of course fly on a plane. The cost of the ticket varies greatly - but could be as little as 900 dollars to as much as 5,000 (More than my car) .. How much you pay for your ticket depends on how many people want to go to the same place and how nice of a seat you have. Most of the plan is filled with Economy seats but there are some first class seats.

When you fly to Europe from the United States you generally have to fly to one of several cities in the United States thave have airports that are big enough for the large planes that fly to Europe.

My students and I left from Oklahoma City,  Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Dallas and travelled to Italy through several cities. Some went to Chicago,  other went to Charlotte, North Carolina, and another even went to Montreal and then caught a big plane to go to Italy.

We were on a Airbus 330 and the plane looked like this.   http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/American_Airlines/American_Airlines_Airbus_A319.php

It is amazing how many people and their luggage they can fit on this plane.

Each person had their own screen that they could watch movies but because our flight was through the night, they serve us dinner and then ask us to go sleep and then wake up for breakfast before we go to Rome.

One of the things that this helps is avoiding Jetlag - Jetlag is defined by the dictionary as "a tired and unpleasant feeling that you sometimes get when you travel by airplane to a place that is far away"  (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jet%20lag)  

What that means is that your body still thinks it is in the United States which is 7 hours behind Italy.  So you have to force yourself to stay away and try to be awake when Italians are awake and asleep when Italians are asleep.  One way to try to avoid this, is to sleep on the plane to match your destination. 

The flight over the ocean was 9 and 1/2 hours long!  but really that is not so long to get to be a world away.

(Picture from : http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gcmap?PATH=DTW-AMS,DTW-CDG,DTW-FCO,DTW-LGW,DTW-LHR,DTW-FRA&PATH-UNITS=mi&SPEED-UNITS=kts)


We you arrive in the airport, you travel to enter the country you have to apply for a visa and announce that you are here.  You wait in a line and they check your passport.
http://italy.usembassy.gov/acs/general-visiting.html

Then you pick up your bags and if you have brought things to sell, you have to go to customs and tell them what you have in your bag.  They call this declaring. When we return to the US we will have to "declare" all the gifts that we are bringing home for family and friends.

Getting to our Home Base

From the Rome airport we took a big bus to Arezzo Italy. It took about 2 hours and 45 minutes. Many people in Italy don't have cars so they take trains instead but because we had so many people we all went on the bus.

Here is a video of the what the countryside looks like between Rome and Arezzo from inside the bus.

Ask yourself - how does it look like the United States? How is it different?  

Because the streets in Arezzo are historic..(That means they are very steep, cobblestone, and narrow).   the bus cannot go on the streets so they dropped us at the train station and we got to walk to our hotels in the rain.



I am going to let students tell you about Arezzo, but this is how we got here.

For more information on Arezzo while you wait, visit here https://www.discovertuscany.com/arezzo/

Buongiorno!   . (Welcome! )