| Glenn's Journal for Wednesday, Thursday 3/27/02 - 3/28/02 Well we are up at 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning to be at the airport 3 hours early to catch our 8:15 a.m. international flight to Milano. We left the house around 5:00 a.m. and arrived at the airport around 5:45 a.m. We needed to beat both the traffic and the crowds to the airport so we would miss the congestion. The airport was really quiet and we found ourselves sitting at our gate by 6:15 a.m. (again for an 8:15 a.m. flight). Our first stop was in Washington Dulles. While we were at LAX we noticed this huge crowd of kids coming our way (all in red sweatshirts). There were 54 people (almost 40 of them 8th graders) heading to Washington for spring break. Guess what? They were on our flight and sitting in the back with us. I was a little worried but knew that it was only the short section of our flight that they were on. The flight was only 5 hours and they were actually well behaved. We had also noticed 2 young ladies carrying backpacks, like ourselves, and wondered where they were off to. We ended up sitting in the same row as them (what a coincidence!) as they were also heading to Milano. We talked for quite a while on the flight. We arrived into Washington Dulles and went off to our next gate. United had not been able to give us seat assignments for the flight to Milan so it was important to get to the gate right away for better seats. Upon arrival at the gate the nice lady at the counter lets us know that they had overbooked the flight by 38 people. They were looking for volunteers to take an upgrade to business class if we would fly Lufthansa to Munich and then on to Milano. We accepted the offer to fly in style. What the heck!!! It only added a few hours to our arrival time and we were much more comfortable. We slept for most of the flight and arrived in Munich around 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning (11:00 p.m. PST Wednesday). We had a very groggy 3 hour layover and then off to Milano. The flight to Milano was a 1 1/2 hour flight with mutliple delays. We arrived around 1:00 p.m.. When we arrived in Milano we wondered if our luggage had actually made it (due to the flight change back in Washington Dulles). Luckily they both made it safely. Once in the airport, we proceeded through the gates and off to find the train from Malpensa airport into Milano (about 25 miles away). Here is where I made my first mistake. I must have been in a hurry (or just plain tired from the flight) and took off from the ticket booth without my credit card. Luckily the ticket agent had called the agent on the train and notified me that I had left it behind. (I can't imagine how he recognized me out of a hundred or so on the train. It must be my boyish charm!!!) Well, after getting to Milano, taking the train back to Malpensa, and back to Milano, we arrived in Milano around 4:30 p.m.. We had only been on the road, in the same clothes, for 27 hours at this point. We decided to take a taxi to expedite our trip to the hotel. We could have taken the subway for less but we were tired. We made it to our Hotel (Hotel Marconi) at around 5:00 p.m., checked in and crashed for the evening. |
 |
| Milan's premier Opera house |