Flights and Itinerarires

Flying standby is a blessing and an adventure in itself, but it's also a pain in the neck. Unlike most travelers, who book their tickets months in advance and turn their attention to more interesting details, my sister and I have to stay abreast of our desired flight's status. We began long ago by checking the number of seats available on a typical weekday flight from Orlando to Rome. Clearly, standby travel is easier during the week, since weekends are popular travel days. After that, we chose a tentative date and periodically checked the remaining seats on the flight as well as the list of other standby passengers hoping to catch a cheap flight across the Atlantic. Now that there's only about a week before we plan to leave, the numbers are entering that point beyond which they will probably not change, so tonight or tomorrow we will "officially" reserve our seats.

It just so happens there's only one flight a day from Orlando to Rome (direct) and it leaves at night. This will put us in the air, soundly sleeping at night (when we SHOULD be sleeping), and on the ground in Italy sometime the next morning. Perfect, right? Hopefully, we'll make our flight... There's always a risk with standby.

I've been working on my tentative itinerary recently. I don't taking immaculately planned vacations, with every moment booked and a constant reminder of the time. However, this is a big opportunity, one I can't easily relive, so I'm hoping to make the most of my time. Unfortunately, as an art history buff, I'd love to hop into every nook and cranny in the ancient city of Rome, and I'm having trouble fitting even the "big-deal" stuff into our expected 4.5-day holiday. As I solidify this itinerary in the next couple of days, I will post it here, so you can all be sufficiently jealous, possibly with mouth agape ("He's going to do ALL of that in ONE DAY?").