Here is my attempt to adequately describe the first leg of our Italian adventure:
After taking 3 exams on Friday morning I set off with Esther, Juliet, Lauren and Julianne for Milan, the first city on our agenda (because it was the cheapest one to fly in to). We managed to make it to the airport and after the first of many mishaps - waiting in the EasyJet check in line for Spain instead of Italy – we somehow made it on the plane in time for take off!
Upon our arrival in Milan things weren’t looking good – I immediately got a text from my friend Allison, whom we were supposed to meet up with for the night, saying that her flight had gotten cancelled….We then learned that there was a city-wide public transportation strike (we were about an hour away from our hotel, and planning to wake up in the morning and take a train to Venice) – NOT good! In our non-existent Italian we managed to find a seemingly legit luxury bus company running buses to the city center, Centrali Statione (which we learned, exists in most every Italian city), and decided to take it. Once we arrived in Milan the transportation strike was evident – the only form of anything we could find were incredibly overpriced taxis that wouldn’t take 5 people and so in a most ridiculous taxi caravan we made it to our one star hotel (where we had booked a triple room and planned to sneak 2 people in) down a very sketchy street in the middle of nowhere. Of course, Esther and I got voted to be the ones to sneak in so we handed off our bags to the 3 others and made our way down the lighter end of the street to find a decent restaurant (it was nearing 10 o’clock at this point). Luckily, we ended up finding a fabulous little restaurant and had the first of many colorful, tasty, and memorable Italian meals. Esther and I split the classic, Margarita pizza and Gorgonzola gnocchi (unbelievable!). The topic of discussion at dinner ended up being how to sneak 2 people into a hotel in which there isn’t a fire escape, only one door, one front desk, and one receptionist – all of which are located in the same 10 foot radius….the answer ended up being: not possible (which we learned after 2 failed attempts). So LUCKY for us they had an extra double room available, for the price of 50 euros with a fabulous view of the building next door, a “spacious” stand-up shower (conveniently located just 5 feet from the bed), and 2 whole windows that we could open to air out the smoke smell. It was cozy none-the-less and we were lucky enough to be woken up by the cleaning man, about 10 minutes before check out time (which was better than the triple room that woke up to banging and shouting approx. 30 minutes after the check out time)!
Our next task of the day was to somehow get to Venice. All we knew was the name of the cheapest train station and a tip from someone that the green line would take us there. After 2 ticketless tram rides and a 20 minute train ride (on a completely deserted train that could well have been taking us out of the city) we made it to the station and managed to purchase 14 euro tickets to Venice, via Verona – we were amazed at our brilliance and took this as a sign that getting around Italy would be cheaper and easier than we thought (wrong)! Our lunch consisted of various Italians vending machine foods while waiting on a train platform….as we sat waiting and bored I decided to read the ticket to everyone, coming across the phrase TICKET MUST BE VALIDATED, but I got the response “No Borden, we obviously do that on the train…” When the train finally came we lugged all of our bags on and into the overhead bins and settled in for the 2 hour journey to Verona. About 20 minutes into the Italian countryside the train conductor came around to punch our tickets, we nonchalantly handed them over….and he started talking to us in Italian which we didn’t understand until the words “50 euros each” came out of his mouth….we stood there shaking our heads and gaping at him until he called over his English-speaking counterpart who asked why our tickets weren’t validated and explained that without the stamp from the yellow box in the station, we owed 50 euros a piece. After a LOT of arguing, hand motions and offers to get off the train immediately, we managed to talk her down to 5 euros a piece (a small price to pay for our new found yellow box knowledge). The rest of our traveling day continued along these lines…we got on the wrong train from Verona to Venice and ended up getting kicked off in the middle of nowhere and having to switch again before arriving in Venice which was fun (and included our very memorable first gelatos of the trip) until we had to find our hotel by waving a piece of paper with the address on it to any Italian who would stop. A 20 minute, body to body bus ride got us there and it was, to our delight, a lot nicer and a lot bigger than our first hotel. Esther and I successfully snuck in and the 5 of us slept well squeezed into 3 small twin beds!
We spent all day Sunday exploring the absolutely gorgeous city of Venice. I had never been and was absolutely blown away by the Grand Canal and all the beautiful and colorful buildings lining it. We spent the day exploring the area around San Marco square, playing with the pigeons, adoring the art and architecture, and splurging on a gondola ride through the adorable little canals. I think my favorite part of Venice was the boat ride at sunset we took back to the train station….one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen and it just took my breath away on the water. Julianne also managed to find the Wake house in Venice on the ride back, very neat to see, but it made us a bit jealous! After all 5 of us purchased Venetian masks to wear on Halloween we bored our (a lot more expensive) train to Rome…Seeing as this covered only 2 of our 7 days in Italy there will be more to come, but dinner calls for now in Paris!
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