Italy: Day 1 - Milan

As I said before, neither Nikki nor I like to fly. Despite this, we held up phenomenally well on both of our flights that day. The flight to Milan from JFK was around 8 hrs long and it went surprisingly quick. Oh, and the food! Delicious! I don't know that I have ever, ever even come close to describing airline food with such exclamation before, and maybe a more cultured foodie would cringe at the stuff, but it was good. Our first experience dealing with the language barrier we were up against was on the plane. The flight attendants asked us questions in Italian before realizing we were clueless and switching to English. Looking back now, we had no idea how often we'd feel like stammering idiots in the coming week. We had a smooth landing in Milan; One of those landings where the entire plane full of passengers starts applauding the pilot for getting them there safely. Strange, but positive nonetheless.

Navigating the Milan airport wasn't too hard. We managed to find the baggage claim area and our matching backpacks relatively quickly. As soon as we got off the plane though, we went into high alert. Before we left Boston, we must have been told 100 times about pickpockets and thieves abound in Italy. Walking through the airport was our first test. We somehow managed to find an ATM machine (bancomat), buy bus tickets and find the bus... all while guarding our backpacks and purses with our lives. In fact, we were even approached by a taxi driver trying to convince us to take a taxi to our hotel for a mere 80 Euros. Uh no. We're not that naive, buddy. At this point, we were on the bus and exhausted. We were desperately trying to keep our eyes open so we wouldn't miss our stop. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 30 minutes, we made it to Stazione Central (Central Station) in Milan and hopped off the bus. Next challenge: get a taxi to our hotel. This one was a cinch and a super quick ride. Bless the HIE (Holiday Inn Express for those not in the know) for it's wonderful staff and triple-sheet technology. Although, it must be said that Italy has seemingly not yet embraced the triple-sheet tech yet, but the hotel itself was well above what one might expect.

We dumped our bags in our room and went out for a quick stroll to see what Milan was like. We were both so defeated by the long hours of traveling that our quick walk was literally about 15 minutes around the block and back. We hopped into bed and took a long afternoon nap, followed by a call for some pizza delivery to our room. Off to a great start, right? Ha!