Day 1 - Arrival in Milan & Stop in Verona

Douglas Adams once wrote, that “…it can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, ‘as pretty as an airport.” Having sampled 4 of these hell-holes in a multiple 22-hour connecting-flight Odyssey I must concur with Mr. Adam’s statement.

We left from our home in Pittsburgh over to Washington's Dulles, then on to Munich's sterile hospital like atmosphere. From there we hopped aboard Italian Air and flew over the Alps (Seen here) finally arriving at Milan (Milano) International which resembled something from Monroeville Mall circa the 1980's to meet up with our other 3 schools, consisting of Texas, Louisiana, & California students. There were about 42 of us and we met our tour director Theodore Matzavinos, a native of Athens, who asked us to call him Theo for the trip. Great candor and sense of humor. More on Theo yet to come obviously.

Our tour leader my friend and co-teacher Stacie Boris was nice enough to ask me to help chaperone the trip yet again which is how I got to go along on the trip. Karns City High School had 14 girl students and only 1 boy attend. EF Tours tends to put together mainly student led groups designed to allow kids to experience Europe through their vast circut network of hotels, tourist stops and sight seeing/walking tours for relatively low prices, but at a slight cost of no-frill type comforts. In other words, our hotels were never 5 star, but what teen age kid could affort such a thing? EF does what it can with what cashflow it has.

We then hoped on a bus and drove 120 miles distance (East, marked in red - see map) across the Po River valley along the ‘Progress Highway’ which stretched quite a ways. I was amazed at how industrial the north of Italy was. All along the highway there were various businesses and small factory operations. It reminded me of a large RFIDC park, or something like that. Now I can understand why the North and South of Italy tend to think of themselves as completely different economies, as the south is more agrarian in nature.

My roommate & travel partner as some of you may know was none other than old schoolmate Rob Meer (or just Meer) who other than having been to Canada had never really left the country before. When asked as to why he might want to travel all over Europe in a bus of teenagers, he once explained it to me as, “This might be the only chance I’ll get to travel to these places with a friend, rather than go by myself.” Those of you who know Rob, can imagine he was pretty quiet at first, and I wasn’t sure how much in common he might have with the group, but in just a few days, he was treated just like one of the group by the kids, getting ‘punked’ on the bus, joining in group jokes and pranks, and was very helpful in helping keep our team together. Stacie and I came to label him as the ‘Conscientious Observer’ as he tended lay back during the tour, keeping a watchful eye out for stray kids, and making some good one liner jokes making everyone laugh.

We had about a 2 hour stop in Verona, a town made famous for its medieval mercantile trade, not to mention the setting for Shakespeare’s famed Romeo and Juliet. Nice town, we checked out an old amphitheater which seemed to be setting up for a concert or something, and walked around a couple of narrow marble side streets adorned with cute shops and sidewalk cafe's.

Arriving in the hotel, our accommodations weren't too bad. Pasta & Salad for dinner were ok, but we were all walking zombies and all crashed shortly after dinner and slept in the next morning. Meer wanted his Mountain Dew fix, but it seems Pepsi products are non-existent in Italy, as Coke has the soft drink market pretty well nailed down.