Close to Europe

I was browsing the Internet for cheap airfares. I was considering a conference trip to Japan during the Thanksgiving holidays, and was wondering what the price and times would be to fly from MA to Narita. By the way, I was using Kayak.com and it's a super helpful tool that allows you to search many many online discount airfare sites at the same time. You can search nearby dates (up to 3 days before and after) together for better deals. I've been using it for a few months and I'm a big fan already :-)

So, what came up as the cheapest airfare (Boston to Narita in late November) was Alitalia. I haven't seen the name before, so I checked where it stops over at... and it was Milan, Italy. What??? I had to read twice before I believed it. Wow! I knew that the East Coast is pretty close to Europe, but this close... And it is almost the other side of the earth from Japan, so flying either way would take almost the same time!? 7h 40m from Boston to Milan and 12h 10m from Milan to Tokyo... Well, it's a bit longer than the best connection in the U.S. (like compared to 2h 44m from Boston to Chicago and 13h 12m from Chicago to Tokyo), but it's cheaper by a night's lodging (Yes, that Italy flight stops over a night on the way back). It seems I can enter Italy without applying for a visa with the current passport, and it might be a possibility.

Maybe not this time. It's a little tight schedule, and if I'm going, I want to at least spend a few days sightseeing! But it's fun to find that Europe getting this close! The image is my imagination of Italy (espresso!) from FreeFoto.com.