Well, today we left for Milano - how exciting... We departed YVR and had an amazing flight with British Airways (my first time but aparently Jacquie has flown to England with them before). I would highly recommend BA to anyone making a long trip. Two meals, complimentary wine, lots of leg room - great!!

 

Unfortunately Heathrow was so backed up that when we landed our 747 had to wait on the tarmac for almost 30 minutes before our gate was free (the previous plane couldn’t leave the gate because there were too many planes  on hold to take off!!!).

 

When we finally got to our gate instead of 75 minutes to change terminals we had about 35 (the flight was already slightly late). Needless to say there were a lot of “’scuse me please” being said... Then we got to “security”.

 

I have never seen a line like this. It was 2 times what the worst line at YVR ever is. And I mean 2 times because there were 2 separate ques!! They had a lady ushering people into each of the lines in order to keep things somewhat civil - it was amazing. So with about 6 minutes to go before our flight to Milan (this is after running through terminal 4, then taking a shuttle bus because the tube is being repaired, and finally dashing through terminal 1) I nipped a ahead of a few travelers and asked a BA rep about making the flight. She immediately ushered us straight through a vacant security line for flight crew.

 

Next followed an “Amazing Race” dash to our gate - and on we went - at 17:44, the scheduled departure time of the flight was 17:45! So we made it - Just.

 

We then waited at the end of the runway for the same reason we were delayed previously. 45 minutes later we were on our way to Milano!

 

Again, a very pleasant flight with BA (I had a vacant seat beside me on this flight as I did on the one to London) with amazing view of the Alps.

 

Upon arriving in Milan, guess what happened?! Yeah, of course our bags hadn’t made it! So we filled out the lost baggage report and continued on our way to Pisa (after picking up the car).

 

After a beautiful 3 hour drive we found our hotel no problem thanks to GPS, checked in and walked to a little pizzeria “centro metri dall’albergo”.

 

Well, that’s it for the first day - a fairly fun one at that! Hopefully my bike and our suitcases show up tomorrow...

 

Good night.