10,000 Miles From Home...Part Two

If you didn't read the previous post, you might want to do so now...This is #2.

We arrived in Milan, Italy at 6:30 am local time (our bodies weren’t quite sure what to do at this point). We got all our luggage, without any problems, and put it all on the floor by the conveyor belt. Daryl went to get couple carts while I sat with the luggage and the girls. He was gone for a long time, and came back with no carts. Hmmm. What do we do now. We double checked our tickets, and yes, we did not fly out until 8:00pm. Okay, that’s long time to sit on the floor with 8 pieces of luggage and 3 kids. From what we could understand in mixed Italian/English, the “cart men” were on strike and you could not get carts unless you paid people to bring these huge ones and take your stuff for you. I was kind of proud of us for understanding what the one guy was saying to us in Italian and VERY little English. Eventually we found someone who gladly took our things for us (we found out later why he was so happy to do it…) and breezed us through customs. We still aren’t sure if we should have stopped there or not!

We found a spot to sit and rest and keep our things out of people’s way. We convinced the girls to snuggle up on the seats with sweatshirts for pillows and blankets and they had a 2 hour nap! We could hardly wake them. Daryl and I took turns sleeping and watching Adrienne and our stuff and we all felt quite a bit better after naps, brushing teeth and combing hair. The guy that dropped our stuff off for us wanted 18€ (about $25 US) for hauling it for us, and quickly took off with the carts. So one of us had to sit with it. Daryl decided to make it his mission to go around and pick up random carts that people may have left. He found 2, thank God. We loaded our things and decided to make The Move. I pushed one cart, he pushed one, Olivia walked, and Anna-Christina pushed Adrienne in the stroller. NOW, people were staring. Oh my goodness, I wish someone could have captured it on video. It struck me so funny I was laughing until I cried (most likely also caused by lack of sleep). People’s expressions were priceless. You would have thought we had 12 kids instead of 3! We found another spot to sit, ate some lunch and Daryl and I took turns sleeping while the girls drew, coloured and did activity books.

Okay, I won’t go into all details of Milan, but we had REAL espresso, pizza, panini, and GELATI. I could have just eaten gelati and drank americanos all day. Wow. When we went to check our stuff in (3 hours before scheduled departure), we were informed that our flight was delayed until 1:30 am. Yes, that’s 5 ½ hours longer. What do we do now??? We looked into putting our things in a locker, but it was crazy expensive. We were very sorry we didn’t know ahead of time, because we could have rented a hotel room, gone sightseeing, or done something useful with our time. At least we had taken turns stepping out the airport doors and getting a view and some pictures of the Alps.

So we were pretty bummed out. But what can you do? Nothing to do but sit and wait and try to make the best of it. Daryl came back from a walk with some amazing panini and drinks and that perked all of us up. We had more naps and eventually it was late enough to check in to our flight.

Here’s the anti-climatic “ending”:

We got on the plane, promptly fell asleep, and slept all the way to Madagascar! We had one short stop in Nosy Be to let a few people on and off and landed in Antananarivo around 2:00 pm local time. After getting all our luggage (and it was ALL THERE!), purchasing visas and clearing customs (I remembered the word “cadeau”!) we saw Matthew and Caitlyn waiting on the other side! What a welcome sight! Poor Caitlyn had given up on us, so I was glad we finally came through for her. J Rhonda and the other kids drove up while we were loading our things (or rather, while we were shooing people off that wanted to help load our things). It is SO good to be here, and still a little surreal. The weather is gorgeous today. Not hot, not cold. It feels like spring did in Canada.

I will write more of our adventures later. Oh, just a side note. We had zebu for supper last night and it tasted remarkably like moose meat. Yummy! Gotta run and help Rhonda with the kids. She’s the natural born teacher and has been reading to them for quite awhile now. We’re going to go outside and enjoy the day.