Italy Blog: Return

Return 5/30-5/31

In order to get to the Milan airport from Florence we had to take a train from Florence to Milan. From the train station we had to take a 1 hour shuttle to the airport. Because the shuttle doesn’t run late at night and we had an 8am flight, we decided to finish our trip up by spending the night at the airport.

We got to the Milan airport at 5pm and proceeded to find things to amuse ourselves until we could check into our flight. We talked to the representative for British Airways and he told us how we go about redeeming our VAT (European sales tax). He also told us that for you cannot check into the flight until about 6am. We had 13 hours to kill at the airport with a cart full of luggage (we ended up buying a lot of souvenirs.)

To pass the time we read various books we had bought, surfed online, watched downloaded episodes on Ming’s laptop and generally just walking around the airport to keep us from sleeping. I did sneak in a 20 minute nap but Ming was a trooper and stayed up the entire time.

6am finally rolled around and we checked into the flight. We then talked to 2 other people who all gave us conflicting answers on how to redeem the VAT. So, we have talked to 3 people who work at the airport and not a single one of them gives you the same answer – you gotta love Europe. Bleh. Ultimately we figured out what to do and then went to our gate and waited for boarding time.

The rest of the trip passed by in a blur because we slept the entire trip. We were so happy to come back to the states and I couldn’t wait until I could sleep in my own bed again. Even our shower, which has absolutely no water pressure, was a welcome sight to me after having to put up with the European showers.

I’m glad to be back in the states and it’ll be a long time before I want to go on another plane ride.