Milano to America

A real live model shoot, I think

A huge park in the city center

This is seriously how people commute! I've even seen pinstripe suits with briefcases in tow

Nothing too eventful happened in Milano (the fifth largest urban area in the EU), but we have posted some pictures from there.

Today we fly back to the states. I wonder if I have spent enough time here to become partly acculturated or not. I guess tomorrow when I step off of the plane in the United States, I will be able to tell if I have symptoms of “reverse culture shock.” When I review the trip I think of many things. We have loved sightseeing here. History and the world make so much more sense when you travel and witness things firsthand. We have gotten a taste of the Italian culture: riding bikes and scooters everywhere, three course meals, being surrounded by history, etc. We have even learned some important Italian words: grazie, scuzie, buon giorno, and of course gelato. We don’t know what the rest of the trip holds for us, but we do know that when we get back to Europe, we will be toting a rather large bicycle and setting off on a new kind of adventure.

Well, it is the same day because of the time difference and gaining eight hours during travel, and man has it been a long one. We caught a shuttle to the Milano airport two hours before our flight and made our flight to London no problem. London, however, had other adventures in store for us! We boarded our flight in London (which we had to get to by a shuttle that took you to the airplane) and were ready to go. An announcement came over the loudspeaker that we couldn't quite hear, but we did decipher the words, "a couple of minutes." Well, we understood that something was going on, and we were also suspicious that it would take a couple minutes. Well, I fell asleep, and next thing I knew it was two hours later and still no movement. We finally got on the move, but were pretty sure that we missed our connecting flight. Sure enough, we missed our connecting flight in Phoenix by 20 minutes (customs and security do not help at all). Being the "responsible" travelers that we are, Nate and I only brought carry-on baggage and checked nothing. This allowed us to take first in the "race to the terminal." We asked every single official looking person in the airport where we needed to be headed, they would point us onward, and thus went our relay. We finally got to the helpdesk where we were supposed to rebook our flight. I had this sneaky suspicion that waiting here would make us miss the next flight. Sure enough...our good friend Murphy met us at the airport because not only did we miss the next two flights, but the very last one to leave Phoenix for the night (at 8:30!). Then we were on a mission to get a free hotel stay out of the deal by going to the other airlines responsible. The very nice lady at the desk quickly informed us that they had already rebooked us to the next flight!!!! Apparently it pays to have checked baggage because they stationed their agents by the carousels to tell everyone which gate they needed to go to!!! Not even an announcement. So we stayed the night at a hotel in hopes that tomorrow's day of travel would be better for us.