The day began at 2:45 am for both my traveling companion Annette and
me. We were meeting up with Julie at customs in Milano, Italia . After
breakfast and loading up the car we were off to the Redding Municipal Airport. Unbeknownst to us, we were about to engage in the first adventure of our travels. To make a long story short, Annette had tried
to check in for her flight on Tuesday as prompted by an email but was unable to
do so. Thus she drove to the airport for help. They looked at her ticket
information and passport and told her not to worry about it, just come early in
the morning - which we did .However, Annette soon discovered that the reason
she had been unable to do the pre-check in was due to the minor detail that her passport had expired just a few
weeks prior. Everyone had read the expiration year as 2016 but when examined
closely, one could see that yes, indeed it expired 2015 not 2016. Annette
notified the airline that she had dual citizenship and asked if she could use her Italian
passport. Italian passports require a woman to use her maiden name, thus the
name on the passport was now different than the name on her ticket. Annette was
told that she had 15 minutes to get the ticket name changed to match her passport and have
it show up on the computer screen if she was going to board
the plane. In spite of all the recordings and options and necessary explanations, miraculously the change
was made and Annette and I boarded the plane together. Whew!!!
Our plane landed in Milano four movies, no sleep and 17 hours later (26 Marzo). Joined
by Julie, le tre` di noi (the 3 of us) headed to the coastal town of Livorno - arriving at the end of a 3-1/2
hour train ride. We were greeted by Annette’s longtime friend Mila, who gave us a warm welcome. Taking us to her cozy casa in Quercianella, she fed us a delicious, traditional home cooked Italian meal of lasagna, insalata, chocolate torte and of course vino rosso. We finally crawled into bed twenty four hours after our day had begun not waking up until noon the next day.
Our first evening in Italia: Sunset over the Mediterranean Sea (photo taken by Julie)
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