St. Christopher, holy patron of travelers, protect me and lead me safely to my destination.

As this is my first post from Italy, I figured I would start off with a prayer I have said over and over and over since take-off Wednesday evening.

St. Christopher, for all my non-Catholic friends reading, is the patron Saint of Travelers. And BOY will I be keeping this guy busy over the extent of my journey.

While I did not grow up Catholic, having a mother who did, provided me with just the right Saint to speak to, given a particular situation.

I have a St. Christopher visor clip that has been in every car I have owned since I was 16 and has traveled on many a flight through my journeys for work.

For this trip, however, he is accompanying us via necklace :)

And he has done an EXCELLENT job.

With the flight from Memphis to Amsterdam (9.5 hours), mom and Rebecca were a little nervous. Neither had been on a plane for that amount of time before and there was a lot of worry about whether we'd be able to sleep, move around, etc.

For me, however, this is never a problem. If you have traveled with me at all, you know that I could pretty much sleep anywhere, perhaps even standing up. My philosophy on long flights is always the same - drink a lot of wine, pop a pill, and wake up in your destination. Done and done.

Well, that wasn't exactly the case. We (and by we, I mean my very friendly mother) met a young woman traveling by herself with a 2 year-old and a 3 month old. Ugh, I know. I got to our row first, and upon seeing these kiddos I immediately began cursing in my head.

But the kids were good as gold, and I was able to fall asleep. I could hear my mom (seated behind me and R) speaking to the mother, but the little girls couldn't have been any better or quieter. We found out that Heather (the mom) was in the Air Force and had been stationed in Italy for 11 years. She was taking her daughters to visit her "Italian Mother" and had decided to do it by herself after she found out her husband wouldn't be able to take time off from work for several months.

At one point about 5.5 hours into the flight, I awoke to find a big eyed 3 month old staring me down, as my mom held her to let poor Heather go use the restroom.

As we landed, Emily, 2, jumped in our laps near the window and said hello and goodbye to all the planes. Such a cutie, this had been her 17th flight and she was a PRO.

Needless to say, these 2 champion kiddos had a hero of a mom totally changed my mind about babies on planes. (However, I still plan to never do something like that by myself and also plan on using LOTS of baby Benadryl to 'get the job done').

Our layover in Amsterdam was super smooth and the flight into Rome very pleasant. Our connection was with KLM and we had fantastic Dutch flight attendants. My mom walked to the back, made friends and snatched us extra caramel cookies.

*Note: I'm such a super nerd and LOVE all the different packaging, so you'll be seeing lots of snack shots over the next few weeks. You have been forewarned :)

Once we landed in Rome, it was a quick trip down to baggage claim, where I got to pick up this 50lb beauty and we were off to the B&B.

 (As hard as I tried, somehow I still over packed. And two days into the journey, I realize that I will be sending SEVERAL things home with the fam as they depart Italy. Get excited for the same outfits gracing my photos OVER AND OVER!)

We arrived at Arches B&B, and after some confusion from the taxi driver - confirmed we WERE in the right spot. And y'all, we didn't get out of that taxi a moment too soon. Italians drive just as crazy as they say. Or possibly crazier. Thankfully the driver only went down a one-way street WRONG, once. And he was very cute, so all was forgiven.

We checked in, turned on the AC and took a well deserved nap.

All in all, a crazy 23 hours of travel, but St. Christopher was with us every step of the way. He always is.