20 lb. babies and the train mix-up....

All righty folks! I am just going to say, “I must enjoy blogging” to endeavor to catalog the events of my two-week euro trip. I am not exaggerating, I departed Murcia April 15 and I returned April 30, that is 16 days of madness. I have to give a shout out to my main motivators: my parents, grandparents, Nicole Schmidt, Brianna Miner, and the parents of my friends. They humor me by reading my blog, and it makes me feel loved.  Hopefully, you have stuck with me even though I disappeared from the blogging world for about two months!

The Euro Trip 2011 started with a flight into Milan, Italy. With Ryanair, you just never know what you are getting into, nothing proved this more to me, than my flight into Milan. It turns out Bergamo airport is an hour outside of Milan, which I did not know, and we had to take a bus ride into town. Thank goodness for the fact that we had purchased a train ticket to Verona much later then are flight landed, or we would have missed our train.

Jessica and I were meeting up with Kristen, Laura, and Tess (our fellow co-conspirators) at the train station. Since they had a later flight, into a different airport, we were able to explore a little of Milan solo. Once we got into the city we took the metro straight to the Duomo. It was extravagant, and took quite a bit of effort to climb with what must have been 20 pounds of weight on my back.

Milan's Duomo in all its glory...

Later on in the trip we learned that you could check your backpacks at the train stations for a good price, luckily, it was not that much later on.

Tip #10: Do not be muscle woman or man! If you can check your backpack, fork over the cash, and check-it. Trust me when I say it beats backpack burn, and a sweaty back. Not to mention the feeling of giving a piggyback ride to a fat baby who you didn’t birth. Also, with the terrorist scare level high, everyone assumes your fat baby is a bomb. My advice: leave it at the train station.

After the Duomo, we had our first Italian dinner and gelato (what can I say we were excited to be in Italy) then went to meet up with the group at the train station. Turns out we were lucky and conveniently ran into them in the HUGE Milan station. They bought tickets for a different train so we had just enough time for an excited embrace before they boarded an earlier train to Verona. Little did Jessica and I know that we would not be seeing them until the next morning.

Jessica and I boarded our train at around 9:00p.m. and arrived in Verona at 11:00p.m. The other girls were supposed to be waiting for us in the station but when we disembarked they were nowhere to be found. We ended up meeting this boy who was also vacationing, he spoke some Italian, and we all decided instead of paying for a taxi the three of us should walk to the hotel, 40 minutes later we arrived at our hotel, 20 pound babies and all! Surprise, Surprise…when we went to check in the girls were not at the hotel either. That is when I started to worry. After all, they had taken a train that was supposed to arrive an hour earlier, and we had spent a good 45 minutes with the bright idea to walk to the hotel. If they had been kidnapped or something it was really going to put a cramp in my style, so I did what I do best, I called my dad. Turns out they had gotten on the wrong train and were going to arrive at the hotel really late. I left a note at the front desk telling them what time we were going to wake up, and then Jessica and I went to bed.

We got ready the next morning and went down for the continental breakfast only to find that the girls never checked in the night before. There it was…the charlie-horse sized cramp in my style. I had looked forward to a wonderful day in Verona renting bicycles from the hotel, eating gelato, seeing the romantic Juliet’s wall, going to dinner, and it all came crashing down.

Jessica and I were eating breakfast when I said, “You know what would be great? If they walked in the door right now.” Two minutes later the three weary travelers barged their way through the hotel door. I got my wish, and brick by brick my wonderful day in Verona re-built itself. While they were all exhausted we only had this one day in Verona so everyone decided to push through the pain and go for the gusto.

We rented bikes and headed in what we hoped was the right direction. It was such a breath of fresh air to be in control of the transportation. No bus driver, no pilot, no cab driver, no metro computer, just us in control of getting to our destination. We biked up and down the hills and streets of Verona; it was a blast!

The Italian traveling group!

Kristen and I with Juliet (yes you are supposed to touch her boobs for some sort of luck!)

View of Verona from the tippity top of a mountain we hiked

A friend of my parents, Jay, had put me in contact with a friend of his in Verona. His friend, Luciano took us all out to dinner. We went out for pizza with his family, and it was a great way to celebrate our first night together in Italy. It was the topping on the cake to a fabulous day. I have to say a big thank you to Jay, and Luciano and his family for being so gracious/welcoming to us in Italy!

The pizza was delicious and the company was even better!