BAC Italy Pics BAC Val d'Aosta 2012

  • June 4-5 - Home to Milan

    I thought that I was jinxed today. As we were getting ready to leave for the airport, Ann could not find her wallet. She did not want to drive without her license, so she dropped me off at Rockridge BART. Then my BART train stalled in the bay tunnel. When I finally reached SFO check-in was a breeze, but the boarding pass scanner was not working and they had to process all 400 of us manually. As a result, we took off 40 minutes late. All was well after that, though. The middle seat was empty in my row so I had extra room. Then the feature movie was "One For The Money" so I got to see what the characters in Janet Evanovich novels should look like. I was disappointed on all of them except Stephanie Plum, her cousin Vinnie and the office secretary, Connie Rosolli. Joe Morelli was too short, Ranger was too rough around the edges and Grandma Mazur was played by an old Debbie Reynolds.


    Even though we left SFO late, we arrived in Frankfurt almost on time. There are two things that I really like about the Frankfurt airport. First, you get lots of exercise walking from your arrival gate to your departure gate including passing through passport control and security. Second, Lufthansa has these really cool coffee machines at their gates that have about a dozen buttons where you select how you want your coffee fixed. I had espresso and cappuccino.


    A strange thing happened in the airport when I turned on my iPhone. It automatically connected to T-Mobil in 3G mode. I wonder what my AT&T bill will look like. I quickly set the phone to "Airplane Mode".


    When I reached Milan, I took the bus from Malpensa to the central train station and walked two blocks to Hotel Florida . I had a small single room in a very quiet area. Free wifi was included. I showered and washed out my traveling clothes. I was pretty wiped out from the flights and jet lag, but I did a neighborhood walk and found all of the usual train station businesses plus a whole lot of restaurants. I picked Trattoria la Baita at random for dinner. It was only 6:00, very early for Italy. I had some decent salami and risotto Milanese with saffron.