Traveling, it's marvelous, wonderful, exhilarating, adventurous, educational, awe-inspiring, fun-filled and many other positive things. However, it can also be exhausting, frustrating, anxiety-filled, uncomfortable, not as expected, and only a few other negative things. Bethy had planned our trip in such a lovely way, we would have one big travel day, then two or three days to explore a city and then another big travel day. Some of our travel days went off without a hitch, others.... well we ran into a few issues on the others.
The day we flew from Paris to Milan was basically a comedy of errors, most were completely out of our control, so we had to just roll with the punches. We woke up to discover a race was being run the morning of our flight, and it's course encircled our building, thus getting an Uber just became a million times harder. We arranged to meet our driver at a nearby hotel, that was outside of the race's way. So, we had to wheel all our bags (I was not a light traveler on this trip) about two blocks to the hotel. We had to dart in front of the racers in order to get to the the other side of the street. At one point we even ran with the race for a while in order to get to where we needed to be.
We passed by these two ragamuffin dogs during our morning adventures, they added a little comedic relief to the situation.
At last we were all loaded into our Uber and on our way to the airport, *big sigh of relief*
After we had made it through security and were on our way to our gate, we were notified our Easy Jet flight had been delayed... Then it was delayed again ... To pass the time, Vienne and I wrote post cards to family. We purchased stamps from a nearby store and then went in search of a post box to drop them off. After a long search, we were told we couldn't mail post cards after we had passed through security *huge eye roll* and since the stamps I had just purchased were for France and we would be in Italy by the end of the day, I couldn't just wait to send them without having to purchase more stamps.
Our family had their postcards hand delivered to them when we got home.
V's artwork was amazing though, she worked so hard on each card.
Finally, we started boarding for our flight ... Just Kidding, we were crammed onto shuttles to take us to our plane. These shuttles were standing only, no air conditioning, and we were all crammed in so tight I was smashed against at least 5 different people, and I couldn't feel one of my arms since it was being pinched against the wall. We drove onto the tarmac, where we sat parked, feet away from our plane, for 45 minutes, I wish I was exaggerating. Once we were finally allowed to board the plane, it felt like such a victory we felt we had to document it. I am holding Vic, Vienne's stuffed dragon she bought at Vaux Le Vicomte (we named him after the chateaux).
When we finally made it to Milan, it was dark and rainy. We ordered an Uber and the 5 of us, all worked together to find the entrance to our Airbnb in the Fashion District. After we were all checked in and were getting settled, we all noticed we were starving. Since it was dark, wet, and cold outside and we were all exhausted and didn't know our new surroundings very well, we opted to order delivery pizza.
I am not sure why, but the pizza took hours to arrive, HOURS. Not the fast, convenient option we were hoping for. To distract us from our hunger, and the never ending wait, we took several silly snap chat filter photos. The time spent curled up in my bed with my sister and my niece, laugh-crying over silly photos, actually turned out to be one of my favorite moments of the trip, it was just so much fun. Some of the more silly of the photos have been locked away in the giggle vault, and are not to be shown to the public.
The pizza did eventually show up, praise the heavens, and it was delicious. We chose to eat it picnic style in the middle of the living room floor, which was actually super fun (until we realized the next morning, it had attracted an entire colony of ants which would infest our apartment for the next two days.... once again, traveling, always an adventure) Milan had more unexpected (bad) surprises in store for us. But for now, we end on a happy note.
I write this post not to complain, but to be real about our travel experience. And sometimes, it is just as fun to remember the frustrating, exhausting days as it is to remember the marvelous and wonderful days.
Also, how adorable is Vienne in her cozy little sleep sack??
No comments:
Post a Comment