Our plan was a bit fluid heading over to Europe. We knew we had one week in Switzerland, then we had thought to go to Venice and perhaps Rome. But every winter Venice has seasonal flooding, and this year (2012) was the sixth worst in recorded history. Which is a very long time in Venice land. The icing on the cake was seeing Venice on the news with tourists in swim suits sitting in five feet of water on the Piazza with their cappuccinos. So we amended our plan to go south to Rome! We had friends near Florence that we wanted to see as well.
There had been an avalanche in the mountains in Switzerland, so our train did not go directly to Milan. The Swiss expertly shepherded us from a train to a long line of very comfortable buses for a 45 minute detour to another train station. They had swapped the English translations to Italian as we had moved south, so we were now unaware of what was being announced.
No problem, the nice young man across from us, when asked, confirmed he was Italian, he did speak English and he'd be happy to assist us with the pending transfer to the correct train platform. The Italian rail had abruptly left all the passengers to Milan from Switzerland alone with no instruction. The train was jarringly different from it's Swiss counterpart, but our new friend helped us along.
Once we arrived in Milan however, we discovered that the city has two stations and our tour had ended at the wrong station. With the wrong currency. In a country where not everyone spoke English. Did I mention it was at night? This is where our new friend Carmine helped us! We gave him a large Swiss franc note and he bought us tickets. But in spite of Richard's warning, he ushered us off the train one stop too soon. Rats. And now he didn't have enough euros for three more tickets.
Enter "The Italian Gentleman". Literally. This distinguished older man, in brilliantly beautiful, shiny black shoes and a wonderfully cut trench coat approaches at the gate to enter the metro. Carmine stops him, explains our situation and he grandly approaches the one human behind glass and raps authoritatively on the glass. Then, in beautiful, lilting Italian (which must be spoken with large, expressive hand gestures), explains our dilemma and the guard lets us back in! No problem. So we ride with Carmine one more stop, become Facebook friends and get a warm invitation should we ever find ourselves in Napoli, just south of Rome. We'd learned earlier on the train that Carmine is a photographer who had spent four months roaming around Europe, primarily in the France countryside, snapping photos for his next "exposition". He had shared images of "The Sea", his previous exposition with us while on the train.
Once in the main Milan train station, which is stunningly beautiful by the way, we wander aimlessly. Finally we order a cappuccino and sit for a bit, decide we will rent a car, then wondered whether we could get better car rental rates at the airport. We succumbed to the need for nourishment by ordering our only McDonald's burger. Just one, and we didn't even finish it. Mostly that was just to have a place to pee. No free pay toilets at the train station. No bank ATM is nearby so we are still using our card.
Once decided we go to the ever helpful rail info office and find there's a cheap bus outside to get to the airport for our car rental. And the kiosk outside takes cards for the payment. So we're off! Onward to the coast. But first, a hotel please. Next up Siri in Italy.
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