Long Day's Journey

After about almost a full day of travel, we made it to Monterosso al Mare, the northernmost town of the Cinque Terre.

We left San Francisco at about 2pm...a window and middle seat (I was the lucky one in the center). On the end was this woman from Oakland, who at first didn't seem to want anything to do with us. I noticed she popped quite a few pills in the first hour or so of the flight...not sure of what but she did keep taking something. When the meal came around, she strews speaking to us...then suddenly stopped,mid-sentence. It was a little scary, I thought she had a stroke or heart attack and started wondering how I could get the flight attendant over. The woman suddenly came to...turns out she had taken sleeping pills and had fallen asleep, mid-sentence. She then continued talking to us, slurring like she was drunk and falling asleep here and there. It was pretty funny.

Landed in Frankfurt about 10am (1am SF time)... We had to pass through security, which took quite a long time. When we finally got there, the guard told me the rules had just changed and I needed to take off my pants and shoes.  Flirting. Weird for a German security official, no? Then, sadly, my hairspray got confiscated because it was too big -- 4oz instead of 3. It had made it through SFO with no problem, so I was surprised.

After all that, it was soon time to get on the final plane of this leg.  A quick hour later, we were in Milan to meet up with Tony! He was an old pro at taking the bus from the airport to train station, so led the way.  It takes about an hour -- though it seemed much longer-- and by the time we arrived it was right about time to get on our train, so we hustled to our spots.

It was a lovely, quiet ride through the Italian countryside...until Genoa. As we were looking out the window at this gorgeous city -- much prettier than I remember-- a group of about 39 ten year olds got on the train. Our quiet car went to very, very loud, with kids running amok, spilling things, wrestling around (and the teachers safely at the other end of the car!)...generally being kids. But the time we got to Monterosso about an hour later, we were all ready for a drink!

We arrived about 7pm (10am SF time), enjoyed the sunset scenery, and head to our hotel, which is in an awesome location right across from the water. After dumping our stuff, it s tine for some food and drink! We enjoyed some local pesto (specialty of the region), local wine, and local limoncello. Then we got one more bottle of local wine and drank it while sitting on our balcony, watching the ocean.

All and all, a very nice end to almost 24 hours of travel.  We woke up and decided to walk the Cinque Terre trail...more on that later!