Flying the Friendly Skies (11/21)

I think I am spoiled now -- forever marred by our experience flying to Rome. Thanks to my old job of flying all over the US every week, I had accumulated a ton of miles on United. My thoughts back then (as I drove to the airport at 5am in 10 degree weather) were to the day I could cash out and have us take our honeymoon to Europe in First Class. That day finally arrived and what can I say -- it was more than we both expected. Our first leg was on a Boeing 777-200 United aircraft from SFO to ORD. I had walked past the United First Suite before, but never had a chance to sit there since it was always two upgrades too many to make it happen. It was nice and the service was good, but it wasn't quite what I thought it would be. Shannyn and I think that's because it was a domestic breakfast flight. No tapes for the PVR, but the rotating lumbar massage was nice to break up for the "Must Love Dogs" and some stupid Hilary Duff movie playing back-to-back. Breakfast was what you would expect on a domestic business class seat -- mushroom omelette with fruit cup, croissant, and plenty of orange juice. On a scale of 1-10, we rated it a solid 6. The definite highlight was our next leg from ORD to FRA on Lufthansa. We boarded our Boeing 747-400 as soon as we landed in Chicago and that's when the excellent service began. Our seats were awesome! There were only 2 other people in First Class besides ourselves, so the attention to detail was excellent. We started with a pre-flight glass of champagne and macadamia nuts. After we were airborne, we selected our PVR movies and started with our appetizer from the cart -- among the choices were caviar, beef carpaccio and some various salads. Shannyn and I both got the carpaccio on a cheese cracker and some grilled vegetables. Next came our mixed greens salad with cucumber mint dressing. Our entrees came out and Shannyn had Red Snapper and I had medallions of venison with asparagus and potatoes. For dessert (and we did have dessert), we had apple strudel and bread pudding. We each had some wine and finished our meals with an espresso. Excellent! Since we had been a bit sleep deprived, we reclined our seats into beds and slept for about 4 hours and woke up to a wonderful breakfast. Shannyn stuck with the yoghurt and fruit plate with fresh baked goods while I had another omelette (way better than the United one) and fruit. The wonderful Lufthansa staff packed a bottle of champagne for us to take to our hotel in honor of our honeymoon. The final kicker was the flight attendants didn't allow the business or economy sections of the plane to disembark until we did -- we were the first ones off of the plane. We felt like royalty! After a brief (30 seconds) pass through customs, we made our way to the next flight on Lufthansa to Rome. This time, we boarded a Airbus A321 aircraft with only business and economy class. The seats were a pain -- I couldn't imagine that seats would be smaller than the US but they are -- even in business class. The flight was only 1.5 hours and the highlight of this portion was the dude in front of us. We think he was nervous because he put on cologne 5 times -- rubbed it on his head, his face -- everywhere. The smell was insane. Finally, through the cloud cover, we saw the green rolling hills of Lazio and Fiumicino airport! We landed around 9:15 local time among some rain clouds and cold weather. No matter, we had finally arrived in Italy!