As we sit on the train headed from Milan to Venice, I can’t help thinking about why we are here in the first place. Aside from the obvious love of travel, Amanda and I are getting set to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary on July 22nd. Our honeymoon was to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, though if we had more money we really wanted to go to Ireland. Cabo was an interesting adventure since we drove all the way from Oregon, but ideally we’d have gone somewhere else. We thought “maybe we’ll try to go on a big trip for our 5 or 10 year anniversary”. At 5 years we sorta got our wish as we felt God calling us on a mission trip to Russia. That started our true love of travel and we’re slowly marking places off our list. We decided at that point to start saving up for our 10 year anniversary. For the past couple of years we’ve been putting money aside, and had decided on Italy and Greece. We’ve both wanted to go to Rome, and since Amanda graduated with a degree in history (focused on the ancient western civilizations), Greece was another logical choice. In planning we decided to start from northern Italy, work our way south and then fly to Athens. This trip will take us to Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre, Rome, Athens, Delphi and Santorini.
So far we’ve survived a little more than 24 hours of straight travel. We left Portland at 8:00am to a beautiful view of the Cacades as we headed east. No matter where we travel, I’m still always in awe of the area we live in and the surrounding mountains. Thats not to say I wouldn’t live somewhere else (overseas), but I love the Northwest.
Here are a couple shots from the plane of the mountains.
I’ve got to say I’m a big fan of Air Canada now. Ample seat room, and touch screen on demand screens for each seat.
We landed in toronto for a 5 hour layover. As we landed we noticed Air Force One out on the tarmac along with planes from Japan and other countries. I’d forgotten that the big summit was happening in Toronto. People on the plane were saying “obama’s here” until one little kid screamed “OBAMA’s HERE”. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.
Here’s air force one from our plane as we taxi’d by.
Grabbed some food in the airport and tried to change our seats on the flight to London. We thought they were a window and middle seat on in a row of 3. Luckily the flight was full and we couldn’t change because it turned out we were the last row, and it was only two seats. Score for Air Canada again 
It was cool to see everyone in the aiport huddled around TV screens watching World Cup. The US was playing Ghana. From the cheers it seemed a lot of people were rooting against the US. That’s the french influence in Toronto for you
Hopped on the plane to Heathrow. As we took off, we got to see an incredible sunset over the clouds. The pictures from inside the plane don’t do it justice:
We had a 4 hour layover in Heathrow. I almost wish we had a day or two layover in London. We had a great time in the 5 days we spent there a few years ago. I can’t wait to hopefully come back in a few years.
During the two hour flight to Milan it was hard to stay awake. At some point you get so tired that you feel like you’re going to pass out. I think that’s how we both felt by this point. Landed, hopped on the airport shuttle to the main train station in Milan, where our hotel was a couple blocks away. Since we had landed at 3:30pm, we didn’t want to immediately get on a train to venice and arrive late late in the evening. So we had planned out crashing in Milan and then picking up the train in the morning. I’m so glad neither of us are in to real fancy hotels or needing everything to be first class. All we really need is a bed, bathroom and a shower. The hotel was 56 euro and I think we got about what was expected. Well, it was actually a little bit bigger than expected, but the toilet seemed to flush “some” of the time..you had to let it sit for quite a while before you could flush it again. We went to bed at 7:00pm local time, which is 10am in portland. It was hard to sleep all the way through as our bodies are adjusting to the time difference. Woke up a bunch of times, but eventually we got up at 5:30am in order to get ready and hit the Milan Duomo(Cathedral) when it opened at 7. Jumped on the metro from the train station and 4 stops later we got the the Cathedral with all it’s glory. It’s one of the 4 largest churches in europe. By the time we’re done with this trip, we’ll have visited 3 of the 4. The 4th will have to come when we visit Spain sometime in the future. The church was pretty darn impressive. When we walked in there was some sort of singing/chanting going on from the main altar, which was a treat. It is a gothic cathedral and looked similar to the ones we’d seen in England and Strasburg, France. The sheer size of it though was crazy. I’m glad we went first thing in the morning though when the Piazza in front was mostly empty and not many people inside.
Stopped back by the train station to pick up or train tickets to Venice. Rick Steves (whose book we’ve been using for some planning) mentioned using the automated machines instead of the Trenitalia agents, but the lady in front of us couldn’t figure out how to use it, we got impatient, and jumped into the short line to the ticket agents.
So here we are now sitting on one of the fast trains to Venice. 2 1/2 hours point to point. I can see how riding the trains all over Europe is the way to go. The seats are big, theres a nice table in between 4 people and there’s electricity to power your laptops. It’s comfortable and leisurely as we ramble through the Italian countryside. A lot of the scenery looks as I’d imagined, and as you see in a lot of pictures. Wheat fields, quaint towns, rows and rows of grapes and hay bales dotting the countryside. Amanda’s sitting next to me reading a book on her ipad while other people work on their computers. Our seats were originally across the aisle from each other, but a lovely older Italian woman motioned for us to trade after I helped an older lady stow her baggage above. She then talked for a few minutes in Italian as I smiled. Finally I had to say “English”. Time to study up a little more on how to say “I only speak English”. Glad my mom bought us a basic Italian phrase book. Thanks mom!
We have about an hour and 20 more minutes before we hit Venice. Then it’s on to our B&B and wandering around the city. We’re in Venice two nights before we go on to Florence. I don’t imagine I’ll have a lot of time for picture editing and blogging while in the cities, but I think these train rides will provide a good time to write things down and reflect. We’re supposed to have internet everywhere but Rome and Cinque Terre. Hopefully I can write on the planes/trains, and post when we get places.
