Italy Diary: Day 1 August 11, 2006
Posted by Martin in : Overseas Travel , trackbackToday Tik, Lisa, Mum, Dad and I flew to Italy for our tri-yearly family get-together. Grandma has booked us rooms in a hotel in Lake Como, in the north of Italy (bordering with Switzerland) for a week. Our family was arriving on the Friday to meet on Saturday with Uncle Mark and Raquel (flying from Spain) and Grandma, Aunty Michelle, Peter and my three cousins Jason, Stuart & Rebecca – in total 13 people.
Considering how problematic our flights could have been we were very lucky. We knew in advance that we would not be able to take any hand luggage onto the plane but our flight was not likely to get cancelled. Tik and I had a challenge to fit all of our possessions into our normal cases seeing as how we both traveled from Bangkok with a backpack each crammed full of hand-luggage but Tik with her expert packing skills got everything in without fuss. We were leaving the UK with a boxed Cadoo game, a brnd-spankingly new Bopit game but not much more. I was a little concerned about packing my laptop in my case seeing as three years ago I totally destroyed my hard-drive transporting it in the same way from Thailand.
We arrived at Liverpool (John Lennon) Airport with plenty of time. We were asked to arrive earlier than usual and to expect delays but the check-in queue was bearable and aside from a more thorough body frisk at security check-in and boarding went smoothly. Many of the security staff seem exhausted and we spotted a police lady at the airport entrance awaken with a shock when a gust of wind hit her, saving her from the embarrassment of falling asleep on her post. My frisker apologized profusely to me as he tried in vain to hide huge yawns as he worked.
We flew Ryanair, arriving a few minutes earlier than expected. We arrived at Bergamo Airport in Milan at 7:45 and rushed to our rental car. This car was to be used by the five of us for the week. I’ll call it the Pavsmobile for now and the “Pavsmobile crew†to refer to the five of us. It was too dark to inspect the car properly but it was large and a Fiat. We comfortably stashed our cases in the back and began a challenging drive to our hotel.
Dad had taken up a lot of his energy in the last week trying to build a credible TomTom Navigation package together so that he’d be able to get into the car, plug in his GPS system, turn on his PDA and have the entire Italy road system available to him. With a bit of luck he’d be prompted by a seductive computer voice to “take the next exit left in 200 metresâ€, “in 50 metres turn right†etc. until we hear the final “you have reached your destinationâ€.
Sadly, the car’s cigar lighter wasn’t working and dad had no way to power the GPS system. It was time to resort to the time-tested but often emotional MumMum navigator with a shitty internet map and crude directions for getting to the hotel. A MumMum we soon discover delivers slightly less useful information in a slightly less seductive voice but boasts a creative range of uniquely unmotivating phrases such as …
“I should have brought a torchâ€
“We’ll don’t expect me to find anything with this mapâ€
“I don’t (actually) know where this (map) will take usâ€
“I don’t think you should have gone that wayâ€
We drove for hours through thin windy roads. It was dark and we headed nervously to the eye of a lightening storm, screaming excitely at every “Lake Como†signpost and biting our tongues when we discovered we’d turned wrongly. We stopped for an emergency pizza to provide some preventative maintenance for MumMum and soldiered on.
We arrived at our hotel about 12:30. We checked in and fell asleep a little after 1:30 am. We’d all arrived a day earlier than the rest of the family who would arrive on the evening of the 12th.
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