Italy Blog: Arrival

Arrival 5/21-5/22

We chose to fly to Italy on British Airways. Neither of us had previously flown on this carrier before and had heard good things about it. The flight was uneventful but comfortable. The flight attendants were nice and the food was much better than United. We each had the obligatory alcoholic drink aboard the flight. ^_^

I watched The Holiday movie on the first leg of the flight (SFO to Heathrow.) The movie was a chic flick and one that was best watched for free. I probably wouldn’t see it again but it was an entertaining enough movie on a very long flight.

Once we arrived in Heathrow we had a 4 hour layover until we boarded the connecting flight to Milan. The Heathrow airport is huge. We walked around the food and shopping area and it was much larger than I would have anticipated. I saw a lot of wine and alcohol stores as well as many name brand stores. I cannot remember all of the stores that are there but the most memorable one is Pink. I have been told by several people that Thomas Pink makes terrific button down shirts. The shirts are pricey (70+ pounds each) but it is well worth it because the cut of the shirt is vastly superior to any other brand. Ming and I wandered into this store and we should have walked right out. We were both running on very little sleep and hunger – not a good combination for shopping. I decided that Ming should try on a Pink shirt since he always wears button down shirts to the office. He ended up loving the shirts and knew immediately that Pink’s reputation as a purveyor of finely tailored shirts was well deserved. He chose a couple of shirts that he liked and then, being the great guy he is, encouraged me to look around the store. I found a shirt that I really liked and found cute. $500 dollars later we walked out the store and went in search of nourishment before the flight. Note to self: love the Pink shirts but I can only indulge that love once in awhile else I won’t be able to pay my mortgage.

We ate at a bar/café and, since this was my first time in England, I had to try something which was uniquely British. The menu had bangers and mash (mashed potatoes and sausage) and I promptly informed Ming that that was what I wanted to eat. I found it very tasty and I can see why the Brits like it so much. Next time I find myself in England, hopefully for a vacation and not a layover, I will have bangers and mash again.

We caught the connecting flight to Milan and then took a train from the airport, Malpensa, to downtown Milan. We had easy directions to take the bus to the neighborhood of our hotel and walk a few blocks, or so we thought. When we got off the train, everything was closed. Apparently, Italy shuts down after 7 pm with the exception of some restaurants and entertainment venues. We asked a few policemen where the bus stands were and they pointed towards an intersection across the street. After a good 20 minutes of wandering in that direction, we realized that their “directions” were way off, and the map that we had of “downtown” was a POS. The map didn’t show any bus stops and only displayed major streets.

By now, our luggage had grown pretty heavy and we decided to ditch the idea of doing it the Italian way and tried to hail cabs. In Italy, people are either friendly, indifferent, or rude. The first handful of cabdrivers ignored us. A few stopped in front of us at stop lights and what we thought was an invitation to hop in turned out to be a wagging finger saying “no-no”. With few options left, we stumbled across a cabbie who was dropping off his fare and agreed to take us to our hotel. On the way, we even provided reverse translation services for a song on his CD which he forgot to credit us for on the fare!