May 5, 2023 to May 6, 2023
To Milan
travel day(s)
Flying to Europe makes for a long day. In reality, with nine hours time change, two days become one really long day. For Scott, travel days usually start long before the alarm bell goes as sleeping before a flight is always hard. As well, Pat likes to get an early start to the airport even though our travel records show that from our door to the airline gate takes only about one hour. Today was no exception. The roads were empty at 5 am and using our Nexus passes, the airport security personnel were just waiting to scan our carry on bags. Total time from leaving our house was about 45 minutes as we reached our departure gate. Our first flight today was at 7 am to Calgary for a connection to Montreal and ultimately an early evening flight to Milan. The sun was setting as we left Montreal and our first day is just about done. All the flights today were on time and without any issues - no reason to loose any sleep, Scott!
Italy was the easiest country we have ever entered! At Customs, we slid our passports under the glass enclosure and with a quick stamp on each passport we were done! Not a single word was spoken. As far as we could tell, for Canadians, there were no other checks and not even a ¨what do you plan to do here?¨. Our bikes and bags all arrived as planned and the only hiccup was looking for the hotel shuttle that we never found. Instead, a taxi efficiently whisked us to our airport lodging where we will spend the next two nights. Our room was even ready for us when we arrived at 11 am. Our trip logistics could not have been much smoother.
Pat managed to stay awake for a short bit but soon succumbed to the weariness of the long travel day. Scott feeling a bit more energetic put together both the Bike Fridays, which also travelled without any issues including a routine CATSA examination. After short nap we organized a short ride to the train station in Gallarate - about 7 kms away. Our wayfinding skills were very rusty and the time checking our bikes was well spent. The local neighborhood streets were tricky to navigate and covering the short 7kms took close to an hour! We had a number of miscues and were riding in circles a few times, but it was just great to be out in a foreign country on a warm sunny day. We did eventually find the train station in Gallarate and learned that trains leaving for Milan run about every 30 minutes. That will be tomorrow's plan.
The small towns of Cardano al Campo and Gallarate are residential communities near the Malpensa airport and likely distant suburbs of Milan. There was no tourism to speak of but we did find a nice restaurant with outdoor seating in Gallarate. Unfortunately they were just preparing to open and would not be available for another 45 minutes. Could we buy a couple of beers? No problem. In fact, the problem was too many beer. Scott went to settle the bill and we were preparing to leave when suddenly two more beer arrived at our table. Our first ordering misadventure! What the heck -what better thing to do on a warm afternoon and our first day in Italy! We had already spied a Poke / dim sum restaurant across the street for dinner.
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Dinner tonight was a very simple rice and fish bowl but perfect after our long journey. Afterwards we found our way back to the hotel through the complex maze of a very non-linear road network making frequent use of Mapsme. Last stop of the day was for gellato. Day one and day two are in the bag and we could not be happier with how it all went.
Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 15 km (9 miles)
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Cheers!
11 months ago