I want to just say a couple of words about traveling to Europe from Seattle. It is a long way, and unless you have enough miles or money to travel first or business class, the trip can be grueling. I suppose folks back home reading this from Italy are going to think that’s kind of petty, but I do have some tips:

The first is to fly through one of the European cities rather than from New York or Atlanta. You get on the plane in the afternoon in Seattle and arrive the next morning, and that has seemed to be a lot more tolerable — and shorter — than going through another American airport.

We have flown on SAS to Copenhagen, Air France to Paris, and this time on Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and it is pretty easy and convenient to get a connecting flight from there. Actually, the best flight from Seattle is to London Heathrow, but it is sometimes harder to get a connecting flight from there because so many of the flights to the continent go from Gatwick, and you have to make that switch.

That being said, you can see from the accompanying photo of an American traveler enjoying the comforts of the Frankfurt airport that this system isn’t foolproof. But at least they don’t have armrests, so one can stretch out. sort of. We were on an Airbus 330 in steerage. Plenty of legroom. If you are under 5-feet.