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Chicago  Brussels
When you are flying five miles above the Atlantic ocean, it's hard not to be amazed by a few facts:
- The ingenuity of man, and his amazing flying machines
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The ability of ones mind to forget the fact that there is only a thin
veneer of cushion and metal between you and 5 miles of air, then 1-2 miles of ocean
water
- Your forethought in taking the window seat, so you don't have to get up every 30min when nature calls for the wife
The other fact is that you are cursing the people at Tylenol, for
their PM variant is not working, and instead of sleeping, the above three thoughts
continue to run through your head, keeping you awake. But sleep does
come sporadically.
We purchased these tickets the day before we set our wedding
date. The best price was flying out on Sunday, Sept 26th, so we thought to
ourselves, "What would be a good day to get married?".
It would be a bit weird to get married after the honeymoon, so we figured we'd go with the stale old convention of
marriage before honeymoon (boring, I know), and we picked
Sept 25th. Yeah,
we setup the honeymoon before the wedding. But I think we were
more stressed out about how to rent a car in Milan, than our wedding
ceremony. But the ceremony itself was fun, and a tad on the
informal side. Curious as to how it went? Click Here. Be warned, though. It gets a little sappy.
Our plane landed in Brussels, Belgium, where we had an hour layover.
Brussels Milan What
is there to say about an hour layover in an airport terminal, after
little sleep for the last 7 hours, other than.....zzzzzzzz.
Oh! sorry about that.
The best sleep of the "night" I think was on the hour flight from
Brussels to Milan. I actually felt pretty decent after that
trip. We also got a decent breakfast, but we weren't that hungry,
so Lin-Wei snagged the two pastries and put them in her bag.
Milan  VeronaWe
arrived at Milan's new international airport, Malpensa, around lunch
time. To me, "Malpensa" sounds like "bad thought" in Spanish, and
I'm going to come right out and say it isn't far off the
mark. Our guide book agreed, calling it one of the worst airports
in Europe. Nothing, of course, beats Frankfurt, Germany's
airport, but Milan is trying very hard to compete. This airport
is about 20 miles from the city, with no public trains going to / from
Milan. That didn't bother us, though, because we were renting a
car for the next part of our journey.
They have a pretty large area where all the rental car companies are
located, but of course ours was around the corner, in a little
nook. We actually couldn't find it for about 10min, and I was
starting to freak out. But we located it finally, filled out some
paper work, and the guy guided us to the car park. When he
pointed out our car, it was hard for me to keep a straight face.
Here was a blue vehicle, that looked like and American SUV, except
reduced in all dimensions by about 50%. Since we were Americans
we must want the biggest car they have, but to call this car big is an
insult to all things medium. The European version of the
SUV, I guess.
It was a two-hour drive from Milan to Verona, or first destination, and
we got on the road just fine. They said Italian drivers were
pretty aggressive, and it is harder to drive there, but after living in
Chicago for 8 years, I think I'm probably ready to drive through the
downtown area of some Turkish metropolis. But after a while,
tiredness started to creep in, as well as hunger. We still hadn't
eaten since our light breakfast, but Lin-Wei came up big time, and
produced the pastries from the plane. God bless those
Belgians. That really hit the spot, gave me my second wind, and we
made it to the outskirts of Verona.
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 It was a nice wedding if I do say so myself. |
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| It was very difficult to stay awake and keep the driver awake. The snack I took was very delicious, I wish I know where I can get some. Of course, everything tastes good when you have not eaten in over 10 hrs. But even after eating that, I was still very hungry. I’m just glad it was enough nutrients to help Al get to Verona safely. |
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