Sandy's Travel Adevntures 2016: Italy & Greece: The Adventure starts.......

So the time has come for me to set off on my next adventure.

It has long been a plan to journey overseas with friends from near and far to celebrate my 50th birthday this year.....

Hard to believe I am now half a century....

So I head from Darwin with Squizz [Helen Taylor] long time friend from Education and School Sport. We fly out in the wee hours of the morning to Singapore to then board a connecting flight to Dubai.

And then meet up with

Annie Curtis [mates from our younger days living and working in broken Hill...many years on we have travelled all over the world to see each other and to make new memories]

Trish Westaway [connection through my days teaching on Katherine School of the Air] and long time friend and travelling companion. Trish is flying from Perth to Dubai.

So after flying for just over 4hrs to Singapore, then boarding the connecting flight to Dubai we flew for another 7 hours. We managed about an hour sleep in between chatting, watching movies and Tv and eating!

Squizz and I then had to board the people move train at Dubai airport to go to a different section of the airport.

With very little hassle we found Trish near our next boarding gate as she had arrived safely from Perth about an hour before us. Now we just needed Annie to arrive from Sydney.......

The time was coming to go through the gate for the flight to Rome in Italy....I rang Annie - no answer.

But the I got a text message - she was already through the gate. So we were all relieved and were happy to see each other.

Off we went again and managed to have Annie, Squizz and I sitting together. Trish was in the front section of the plane so I tried to call her on the seat to seat phones BUT I had the wrong seat number as they had moved her. Wonder if I was ringing an empty seat?

Anyway after lots more talking, eating, watching TV and a little power nap 6.5hrs had gone and we were in Italy Ye ha!

Took us a while to get through customs etc but the our driver Robbie was there with a sign saying my name. He helped us with our bags (all safely arrived thank goodness as I have had my bags go missing on previous overseas trips) and drove us 30mins to our apartment in the centre of the old part of Rome - nearby to The Trevi Fountain and the Colloseum.

We settled in and even though by now it was about 4am back in Australia and we had been travelling for 24hrs we headed out for dinner - it was about 10:30pm here in Rome. We wandered down the cobbled path and found a local restaurant - they cleared a table for us and soon has us eating!