Ciao, Italia!

[Just to be clear to our readers, we thought the long titles of our previous posts were funny - in fact, Julia was in tears each time. This blog is a duress-free production and no one is forced to write anything, we promise]

Tess here! Katie and Julia are still sleeping, and after you read about this travel day, you'll see why.

Our last night in Italy was just gorgeous. We dressed up after our nap and took a stroll though downtown Verona for a snack and a drink. We settled in at a lovely table overlooking the Piazza Bra' and the Arena di Verona and enjoyed a bottle of wine. (Julia was looking extra-pretty, so our waiter gave us 3 antipasta plates to enjoy on the house. He didn't realize we would consider this our dinner and cease to order any food!) We continued our stroll and went gelato shopping. Success all around!

Wednesday morning was a very early start by our standards. We were up at sunrise to pack, say goodby to the Franciscus Guesthouse (and the smelly cat that lived there that Julia was convinced was a street cat that we should just let out the front door) and walked with Hansel and Gretl (our backpacks) to the Verona train station. The 7:32am train to Milano was on time and quite fancy by the train standards we've developed. It was a quick hour-and-a-half to Milano. We loved the enormous old train station and proceeded immediately to the shuttle buses to the Malpensa airport.

An hour later we were on a coach bus-ride to the airport. I was convinced someone was going to steal our backpacks from the undercarriage of the bus, but we succeeded in watching like hawks and everything made it to the airport.

As the Italians seem to big very keen on one ticket window being open at a time, we could not check into our flight - thats right, the entire airline had one desk for all flights for the entire day. We did what we do best in Italy: read our books for two hours while enjoying $1 cappucinos! Just a lovely way to spend an afternoon, regardless of airport setting.

We had a smooth check-in and the flight to Barcelona was only an hour and a half. We hopped a very cute shuttle bus to downtown Barcelona and had no problems... until we got to the hostel! We got there around 5pm, and by 5:30 we had already checked out!! The situation is since resolved but we had a rocky afternoon worthy of its own post. All is well and we are at a new hotel - the whole story soon!
More from Spain later today!

Tess