Finally!

The three of us finally made it to Florence! It ended up taking a VERY long time to get here, but nothing was broken, lost, or stolen en route so there is nothing to complain about.

While waiting at the airport Saturday morning Seth came back from his run in time for me to go for a short trot towards that town. It was not very impressive yet it was nonetheless interesting and it felt great to get some fresh, cool air after being cooped up for so long.

During Seth's run through the town (Reykjanesbaer)

My photos:

Welcome to some place with a really really long name

I love the lone airport sculpture
The inside of the airport looks like a page from an Ikea ad

The flight to Malpensa (a town outside of Milan) was also pretty short, less than 5 hours (also no complimentary food), and Seth chatted with the guy next to him the entire time, mostly in Italian--a good warm up! We also managed to snag a pair of Icelandair wings for Lorenzo, being his first flight and all. When we got to the airport we claimed our bags and were relieved to find our gerbil in good health waiting for us. We made our way to customs thinking we would have to prove Lorenzo was legal, but there was no need--customs consisted of two guys half asleep behind a table--they barely even looked up when we walked by. So much for needing the proper documentation; it turned out he didn't need ANY. And, we still had some fruit and veggies left over to snack on during the hour bus ride to Milan.

Arriving in Milan was difficult--we had all 9 of our bags, plus the gerbil, and had to carry it all in the rain and through the train station without carts. It was VERY slow going and frustrating at times. Unfortunately all the trains were booked for the next three hours so we hunkered down for a while and ate our box of pasta Seth had made back in New York. We took the 10pm train to Florence; it was not only the last train of the night but also very crowded, so we had a heck of a time trying to find room for all the luggage.

Some of our bags. We made good use of bungee cords.

Waiting at Milan's central station

We ended up in a 6-person compartment with 4 Italians: three ladies of different ages and a guy in his 40s. They had never met but were already chatting away like they had known each other for years, talking about the younger girl's trip to Jerusalem, Jehova's Witnesses and spirituality. The also asked us lots of questions about where we were from, what was in the white box labeled 'Fragile, Live Animal', and what we were doing in Florence. When the train finally arrived in Florence (it arrived 30min early and the conductor was not announcing the stations, so luckily some guy was kind enough to notify us of our stop), we were surprised to find all these drunk youths helping us unload all our luggage; while we were sleeping the older lady in the compartment must have told them about us and they all wanted to help the people with the little criceto (hamster). It was like something out of the movies.

Even though it was very late at night it was nice because there were very few people around. We had to relay the luggage up and down stairs and make our way slowly to the taxi rink, which would have been nearly impossible had it been crowded. We grabbed a cab and finally made it to the apartment by 2:30am, 34.5 hours after we left New York.