For my daughter’s high school graduation present, I took her and my mother to Italy.
I love all things Italian: gelato, cappuccino, red wine, art, and artifacts!
It’s amazing how long a hop across the pond can take. Direct flights are hard to come by and very expensive. We left from Raleigh (RDU) at 2:30 in the afternoon, sat in the Newark Airport for a few hours, and then boarded a plane to Milan. The Newark airport made us nervous. It was jolting going from the calm and slow pace of North Carolina to the rush of Newark. It was good conditioning for the even faster pace of Italy.
There are no international flights into Milan, so technically we didn’t land in Milan. The international flights land in Malpensa, which is on the outskirts of Milan and not the most exciting tourist destination. So, when we flew into Malpensa, we needed to leave Malpensa immediately, which meant a train to another train. Did we sleep on the plane? No, not really.
I can never sleep on planes.
We landed at 2:50 am our time, or 8:50 am Italian time, and started the long walk through many dull-walled corridors through the airport to the Malpensa Express train. We bought a family pass for two adults and two children (even though we only had two adults and one child) because it was $30E as opposed to $36E for individual tickets.
It pays to research, and that $6E savings bought a really nice bottle of Chianti!
The Malpensa Express is a gloomy train ride into an even gloomier train station. The ride lasted 45 minutes. When we got out of the train, we were hit by the awful smell of a country that hasn’t realized smoking cigarettes causes cancer.
Not only was there a smoky gloom about the station, there were also many beggars of all ages. We trudged through the station in a sleep-deprived trance.
We found a café to sit in, drank cappuccino, and waited for our next train. This train was a small step up from the Malpensa Express. The train traveled non-stop from Milan Centrale to Florence in less than two hours.
Although the trains in Italy are not luxurious, they are convenient, safe, and affordable. The train station was rough, but once we were on the train, people were kind and considerate. Our train from Milan Centrale to Florence cost $44E each ticket. We were in Florence before our nap took us to into REM sleep.
The Florence train station was a little nicer than Milan Centrale. Although we still had the smell of old well-used ashtrays wafting through the air, there were less beggars, and it was lighter and less gloomy. It was an easy walk from the train to the taxi stand, and taxis were in abundance.
Some tips from things I quickly learned were:
- Trying to stay away from people smoking once off the train is nearly impossible as everyone smokes.
- The beggars in the train station are career beggars. Don’t establish eye contact with them. If you look at them, they will keep begging. If you don’t look at them, they leave you alone faster.
- Keep your purse close by or it will be stolen.
- If someone asks you if he can help you find your train, just say no! That person will direct you to your train and then expect you to pay him $10. If you don’t pay him, he will begin to yell at you. During one of our train rides, a man took my mom’s suitcase. Sadly, she let him. I had to chase after him, firmly rip it from his grasp, and yell at him to which he told me I owed him money for his efforts. There is no such thing as chivalry in an Italian train station.
Our vacation really began once we got to our first hotel in Florence, Hotel Morandi Alla Crocetta. That’s where the cupids come in. We slept under 17th Century frescoes in a building that was a convent. I will tell you about that in my next post.
Ciao
