There was a lot of traveling necessary for our trip to Florence to see Nadia. I guess, when you get down to it, it’s all traveling when we’re on these trips, but we’ve pretty much spent the last day and a half in constant motion. Also, we’re not actually going to be in Florence for a couple of days. So the traveling will continue.

It all started early Friday afternoon when I skipped out of school during lunch time, leaving the first graders with a substitute for the last 45 minutes of the day. We were facing Boston traffic on the first major leg of our trip, and we wanted to make sure we got an early start. Who knows what might be waiting on Route 1A in Roxbury?

Actually, we know because it was yesterday and it already happened. The answer is not much was waiting for us. We got to our parking lot and then the shuttle without any fuss. Security check was smooth. We arrived at our gate in plenty of time. We didn’t even have to find food in the the terminal because SAS airlines was giving us dinner and also a little breakfast on our way to our Copenhagen, where an hour-long layover waited for us.

Still, we had plenty to do with our time. Task 1 was to check out one of the travel lounges that our new credit card promises us access to. It costs us extra money in the form of an annual fee, but there is supposed be free food and drinks, and we’re travelling sorts of people, so we thought it would be worth it. This travel lounge was sponsored by Air France (I will not mention the name of the credit card company unless they offer to sponsor us or at least give us the travel lounges for free). It was very close to our gate. We took a special elevator to get there. There was a sign out front that said it was being rennovated and would be closed until this summer. We were disappointed, but not despondent. There was another lounge in Copenhagen that would surely have coffee and stuff for us during our hour-long layover tomorrow morning.

Instead of gorging ourselves on food we paid an unnamed credit card company to give us access to, we returned to our gate and played the game that we like to play that goes like this: We tell them we are carrying on our luggage; then, when they inevitably offer to gate check bags for free, we take them up on it. It costs a lot of money to check bags otherwise. We travel a lot and are very savvy.

Pleased with ourselves, we got onto our plane and started watching some movies while they fixed somthing that was preventing takeoff. It’s easy to distract us by putting screens in front of us, and we didn’t really catch what was going on. All three of us remember hearing it said that someone was fixing something and we would be leaving late, but we would not be arriving very late because of tail winds.

 

At some point during our movies, the plane took off. A lttle later we were fed — good stuff on SAS. We slept a little, watched stuff, read some things. They eventually brought us nice breakfast sandwiches and coffees. We got to Copenhagen to finish the second major leg of our travel day and a half, and wouldn’t you know it, the tail winds must not have been that great after all. We were 45 mintues later than we were supposed to be. We no longer had an hour-plus layover. We no longer planned to visit a travel lounge. We were worried we were going to miss our flight to Milan.

So began the shortest, but most exciting, leg of our travel day. We were in the E terminal and we had to get all the way to the A terminal. In between was passport control. We had about 20 mintues.

Don’t worry, everyone, we made our flight. Here’s what we had to do to make it: We had to wait patiently while every other row of the plane took their time getting their bags down and stretching and all else. When we finally got off the plane, we ran ran ran. This was made easier because we didn’t have our big bags. We gate checked them because we are clever.

All the running came to a stop when we crashed into the considerable passport control line. It did not look good, friends. Even after Jen informed a woman in an SAS uniform that we had an pressing need to get over to Gate A21, and even after the lady moved us 3/4 of the way up the line (as soon as she did that, EVERYONE started telling her about THEIR pressing connection concerns, and she stopped moving people up — she told us moving up in line wouldn’t make a difference, anyway, and she said they would not be holding flights for people arriving late), it still did not look good. The Copenhagen airport appeared to be expecting 40 people to need their passports checked, and there were 400 people who needed their passports checked. There were only two booths open! Eventually, they opened two more booths and we got through passport control.

Then we ran ran ran some more. It was about a mile of running, weaving in and out of people. I was clearly the weakest link, lagging behind Jen and Lanie. Then I saw the sign for Terminal A and I dodged around some people, cutting a corner close, and suddenly I was in front, leading the way. I was running and dodging and out of breath when everything fell out of my unzipped backpack. We were right about at Gate A14. Ugh.

Jen and a lady I had just dodged help me get my thing back in. We scurried the last seven gates fearing the worst.

And then, like I told you, we scanned our boarding passes and got on the plane, panting and coughing from our sprint.

After that we sat around on the plane for a while (panting and coughing) and the pilot came on to say we were waiting for people whose connecting flights were a little late.

At least we didn’t have to run across the airport with our big bags. Very wise of us to do the gate check.

Exhaustion helped us sleep a little on the hour long flight to Milan, though we got a cool view of the Alps as we started our descent. We had plenty of time to catch our train for leg…5, think. In this airport we just strolled leisurely to baggage check. We didn’t even have to have our passports checked because they did that in Copenhagen.

There was some concern as we walked that maybe our luggage didn’t manage to move across the Copenhagen airport as quickly as we had done, but that was followed by great relief when my bag and Jen’s bag were the practically the first ones we saw on the carousel. We refilled our water bottles — airport sprinting is dehydrating — and watched on as Lanie waited for her bag. We drank some water and watched and waited. We drank some more water and waited. Her bag didn’t come out. As we got less dehydrated, our hopes of finding Lanie’s suitcase sank.

It turns out, as Jen was able to ascertain, that Lanie’s luggage had not been left in Copenhagen like the bags of many people in line with Jen at the lost luggage desk. True, it did not get sent to Milan, but it wasn’t still in Copenhagen.  What kind of fools gate-check their luggage?

SAS airlines knew where it went, though, and they told Jen they would drive it over to us at our temporary living accommodations when it comes in tomorrow.

This would have been a good time for there to be an airport lounge in the train station, but our credit card company does not offer such perks, even though we pay them extra money. We did manage to get onto our train to Milan Center — actaully, we got on a train that left 20 minutes earlier than the one Jen bought tickets for because the train manager said it was ok.

In Milan’s lovely train station, we admired the architecture, which combined classical and early 20th century elements with a special focus on hiding the bathrooms. I would call this leg 7 — finding the bathroooms in the Milan Center train station because we had to walk all over the place to find it.

We were not out of legs yet.  Leg 8 was a three-hour train ride to the coast.   Our stop was not the last one on the line, so someone would have to stay awake and pay attention to where we were.  Jen set an alarm for 5 (our stop was scheduled for 5:10), just in case.

I wrote a lot of blog on that train, peeking out the window from time to time to take in the Italian scenery.  Eventually, I could start to see the ocean between the buildings.  The towns we traveled through startd to take on a seaside flavor — there were beaches and people swimming in the snippets I saw.

We finally made it to our stop in Monterosso, where Nadia and a nice apartment waited for us.  We found Nadia right there at the station.  Then we started Leg 9 of the trip, which was to walk to our accommodations.  This is not a car-heavy place.  There is a road that snakes along the cliffside and through a tunnel, but it was filled with pedestrian traffic.  Eventually, we noticed a taxi or two beeping their way through the crowds, and at one point this evening an ambulance made its way through, but mostly it’s just people walking around.

After snaking our way along the hillside we turned a corner and village spread out on the far side of the beach.  Most of the alleyways we walked through would be too small for a car, but we did pass a tiny pickup truck, which must be how they get things around here.

We were instantly charmed by the place.  It is old and rustic and vibrant with beachgoers and hikers.  From here, we will be able to walk to four other villages similarly tucked into crags along the coastline.

They won’t technically be counted as legs of our travel because we’ll be staing in this apartment for a few nights.

So, walking around to find a restaurant was just for fun, and finding a gelato shop afterwards was, too, even though we decided to go the long way.  Our path led us up a series of ramps and many stairways to a hilltop convent that was crowned with a graveyard that offered views of the ocean and terraced hills.   Even though we’d been awake for about 34 hours at this point, we were in no rush to get back to our apartment.

It was well-earned sleep when we finally stopped moving around for the day.