Susan has decided - she hates Italy and would be perfectly content to never return. Well, maybe that language is too strong, but today we had several misadventures, so that's what's on her mind right now.

The day started out great with a nice buffet breakfast at our hotel. We wanted to get on the road by 10am, but when we went to check out we encountered a problem. We had already paid PriceLine for the hotel, but somehow PriceLine had failed to transfer the money to the hotel, so the hotel was charging us again - and charging a rate that was WAY more than what we had agreed upon via PriceLine. Eventually, after an hour of checking our account on the internet and being on teh phone with PriceLine, we understood what caused the problem, but PriceLine's cusotmer service department wouldn't be open for another 3 hours. We were already getting a later start than we had hoped, so we weren't going to wait around in Milan for PriceLine to open, so we paid the bill and left - hopefully things will go smoothlyt with PriceLine and we'll be refunded later.

The next misadventure was with the toll roads. Unline America, it's not clearly written how much you'll have to pay, so it's a scramble at the last minute to get the right money available. We went to pay one toll and the woman had a problem that we couldn't understand (she didn't speak English) but the end result was that she took an extra 0,55 Euros that she shouldn't have. It was so lame. By the time we realized the error it was too late. At least in Switzerland you just buy a vignette and don't have to worry about paying tolls every few kilometers. And the lines to pay the tolls in Italy are far too long!

Anyways, we arrived in Zurich much later than expected and Ivan's friend, Eduard, had taken all day off work to hang out with us! He was waiting for us when we arrived and helped us return the car. Thankfully, the agent spoke English and we didn't have any problems. Then, we went to Eduard's house for dinner - a traditional Swiss dinner of macaroni, 2 types of Swiss cheese, potatoes, and onions - in a casserole - so delicious!! After dinner we retunred to the hostel and went to bed.

Labels: Europe 2008, Italy, Switzerland

It's official - Susan has her first grey hair. We're calling it the "Europe Hair" as it was no doubt caused by all of the stress that went into planning this trip that we're on right now.

We wanted to leave Venice early today (we're driving to Milan), but we didn't get on the road until about 10:30am. We thought it was supposed to be a 5 hour drive, so we were happy when Daniel said we would arrive by 1pm. However, we hit traffic and then Daniel told us to exit the toll road only to re-enter 3 km later (that's right, slowed down by driving on surface streets AND we had to pay two tolls). In the end, we arrived in Milan around 2pm. We checked into our very nice 4-star hotel (found via PriceLine) and set off for the Duomo. We went inside and Ivan got the audioguide to learn more while Claire and Susan explored some shops (and Susan bought a souvineer notebook). Around 4:30pm we joined up with Ivan's old classmate, Azamat, who showed us around the city and treated us to the typical Italian evening snack: "Macchiato" - a tiny cup of coffee with frothy cream and sugar to taste. It was better than "typical" coffee, but Claire and Susan, with their decidedly "anti-coffee" mindsets weren't won over.

We bid farewell to Azamat, who drove off in an interesting enclosed BMW motorcycle (Ivan thinks he'd like one of those) and then went to a pizza place for dinner. On the way back to our hotel, we bought some ice cream bars for dessert and returned to the hotel to relax and retire at a decent hour.

Labels: Europe 2008, Italy

Last night we had a few interruptions which disturbed our sleep. First, a phone call after we were already asleep from the front desk telling us to be quite (apparently someone had complained about the noise someone else was making and somehow concluded that it was us being too loud). Then, early in the morning a woman came knocking on our door for no apparent reason. However, with all of the shutters closed it was quite and dark, so we were able to sleep in. Susan was the first to wake up and decided to find a market to buy breakfast food. Quite close to our hotel (about a 5 minute walk) is a great little market so we were able to eat a quick breakfast in our hotel room.

After breakfast we went back to St. Mark's in search of an audioguide of the city in English. Unfortunately, they were all sold out, so we just went to the Doge's Palace to learn more about the city. We returned to the hotel for lunch and then went back out to explore the city. Susan was starting to feel under the weather (headache and dizziness) so we concluded she was dehydrated and needed to return to the hotel and call it a day. So, we spent a restful evening in the hotel.

Labels: Europe 2008, Italy

Since we had limited time in Salzburg yesterday due to our late start and last minute scrounging for a hotel, we spent 1/2 of today wandering the streets of Salzburg and discovering new history. Howevr, we had a 5 hour drive to Venice ahead of us, so we left around noon. We drove through the Alps (literally... there's probably 30 km of tunnels between Austria and Italy) and met with a few delays: for 20 minutes we had a read light for one of the tunnels (no idea why) and then in Italy we had to wait in line at the toll booth for an hour because traffic was so backed up.

We decided to park on the island where it's safer and closer to where we were staying and took a water bus to our hotel. Claire had bought some study materials for the Italian language and she had been able to use it a lot (so many people don't speak English here). The hotel (recommended to us by Susan's former roomie, Christine) is nice and we were glad the staff speak English. We checked in and got our bearings and planned out our evening. We consulted Rick Steves and found an inexpensive pizzeria, which turned out to be excellent (thought the service was a bit slot).

We went to St. Mark's Square to find out where we would be going the next day to save time tomorrow. What a difference between night and day of the city. At 10pm, there were still crowds of people on the square, but during the day there are MOBS of people. Claire bought a great mask for her collection and we had a great evening walking around and listening to the live entertainment on the square (every restaurant seems to have a live quartet playing great music).

Labels: Austria, Europe 2008, Italy