There was a bus, a tram, a subway, and a train…that got our group back to Rome from the beach. We had secured plane tickets for Thursday the 22nd of April from Milan to Prague late Monday night, and we figured we would spend a short Wednesday afternoon in Italy’s fashion capital before bunking down in the airport for our flight the next morning.
And then the fun began…we arrived at the Rome train station at 8:29 am with the intent of buying a ticket on the first train to Milan—at 8:33am. As you may or may not have guessed, we did not make the first train, so we bought a ticket on the second train scheduled to leave at noon and arrive in Milan around 7:00pm. Not a problem, we would just catch dinner in the city, right? Wrong, a train derailment caused a two hour delay for our train that only made my getting up at 6:00 am that much more pleasurable.
We arrived in Milan: smelly, tired, and a bit temperamental around 10:00pm hoping, praying, and pleading that our flight the next morning would not be cancelled.
We found a place to eat. We found a place to check the Internet. We found our way to the airport. We crashed.
And we commenced the longest night of my life. I could pretend that I was tough and say it wasn’t that bad, but my middle class upbringing has caused me to covet certain things. The least of which is a bed with a blanket and a real shower. Freezing, fearing the loss of our possessions, and just downright uncomfortable, I wanted nothing more than for morning to come.
The next morning—never so happy to get out of bed—we prepared for our flight. On time and ash free we make to the City of Spires, but we are still a bus, a train, and a tram away from our almost homes. 36 hours of travel and many purchases of price gouged food later, we arrive to our almost real beds. And we stayed there for the next 36.
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