Note: Internet access has been hard to come by lately, so we've queued up some posts from the past week...
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
We were packed up and mobile from our apartment by 4:00am. We hopped on the U-Bahn then transferred to a bus we arrived at the airport by 5:00am. The public transportation system in Berlin is something special. There are ticket kiosks in the transportation and separate validation terminals. The entire system runs on the honor system. There are periodic checks to verify that each rider is in possession of a valid ticket. Those that do not have a valid ticket in hand will be heavily fined. So basically anyone can just walk up and take a bus or a subway. Its really quite different from other subway systems that we have experienced previously.
Once at the airport, we were flying easy jet (think Southwest for Europe). Cost $60.00 for two people to fly from Berlin to Milan. There boarding procedure was very interesting first come first serve, just like Southwest. Divided up into sections, but then everyone got onto a bus – to bus out to the plane and it was a free for all. We were in boarding group A and ended up getting stuck behind people that were in boarding group C for actually getting on the plane. It seems strange to go through all the hassle of dividing everything up just to have everyone make a mad dash for the plane in the end.
When we arrived in Milan we picked up our car, a Renault Clio (think bigger then a smartcar but smaller then a beetle). It was Mark’s first full day of driving a manual transmission vehicle (talk about an adventure!!!!), it was quite the experience. All in one day we had traffic jams, mountain roads with switchbacks, narrow village roads, all in the rain – at least it wasn’t snow (that was Thursday!). After a quick detour to Switzerland (yeah that was quite the conversation in the car – it went like this –
Mark “wait are we leaving the country?”
Jen “I don’t know.”
Mark “Well it looks like it.”
Jen “Wait Switzerland is this close?”
Jen “ I thought we were suppose to be in Italy!!!”
And let me tell you – the border people were less than helpful. They didn’t speak English so I have no idea what all happened there.) We finally took a road that was about that was about 1000 miles long and it took about 10 hours (ok so it felt like that). It was about the size for a beetle to fit through (and not the VW beetle). We finally made it to our destination, Bellagio on Lake Como in the Italian Alps.
We checked into our apartment, a beautiful new villa overlooking miles and miles of fog and rain. We spent the rest of our rainy Wednesday settling in, doing laundry, visiting the local grocery store and planning Thursday’s activities. Asiago and parmesan toasted cheese sandwiches coupled with minestrone soup was on the menu for dinner.