Continuing on to Italia

It was nice to break up our long flight to Italy with a visit to NJ. Yet, flying Newark to Rome direct is still a horrific flight experience in the dregs of the airplane. In fact, since the 1990s, the width of most airplane seats shrunk from 18 inches to 16 inches, and the distance between seat backs decreased from 35 inches to sometimes less than 28! And, transatlantic flights in the past were never completely packed. Every flight we’ve taken in the last few years, has completely sold out, in fact over-booked — so not a single empty seat! Now, we only book aisle seats — the center seat is truly a claustrophobic torture chamber.