Molly coming to Torino was easily the most anticipated thing for me in the last two months. I know it may be sappy or whatever but I love Molly like crazy. I left on the 11th of January and she came to Italy on the 11th of March. Those two months were far tougher without her than I would have imagined. I had been planning her trip here for a while and was very excited. Armed with good recipes, great restaurant ideas and tons to do, I was prepared and excited! Then a good Italian bus strike struck and decided to try to mess with out plans...
I had done all the preparations one could do, from buy flowers, food, fruit (not too good/common in Scotland I guess), clean the floors, make sure all the laundry was done and dried and everything. Then, the day comes and we found out that there was a bus strike that meant that the Metro, Bus and Tram system in Torino would be unusable for the day that Molly arrived. Knowing this would alter the plans for the night, I adjusted everything and walked the 3 or 4 miles to the bus station in Torino, starting an hour before Molly’s bus was due to arrive and made sure I got there on time to see her come off the bus.
The moment the bus came up, I was overcome with emotion and started to tear up. I saw Molly and all that sappy stuff that happens in the movies happened, from the running toward each other and long hug and kiss, happened. We began the walk back and I got to show Molly more of Torino than I had anticipated getting to show her. Molly, hearing me brag about the awesomeness of a Kebab Pizza was dying for one but the strike was putting that in jeopardy because we had an hour or so long walk back and we had to get to the Kebab place before they closed. We ran down some of the less scenic streets of Torino and arrived at the Kebab place with about 5 minutes to spare. Molly’s first Kebab pizza was, as anticipated, so good, it would not be the last of the trip. Exhausted from a day of travel and a bit of a run, we collapsed soon thereafter and passed out.
We woke up early on the next day and made our way back downtown and got to take the Metro. Molly was amazed at how much quicker it made the trip because the last 45 minutes of the walk were now down to a 7-minute ride. We got off the metro at Porta Nuova and made our way down the expensive and very nice Via Roma. After doing plenty of window-shopping, we made our way to Palazzo Madama. I got to show Molly most of the things in the last blog about Palazzo Madama but here is a link to that blog incase you want to check out those pictures. Here are more pictures of that trip and below is pictures of this trip. As you can tell, it wasnt the clearest day but it was a great time nonetheless.
After slowly walking through the whole museum and with rain starting to come down, we decided to run into a gelato shop, get some gelato then head back to the apartment to figure out dinner. In the end, I took Molly to the same restaurant that I went to my first night in Torino and we had the now World Famous, Chips Pizza and Gelato. Quite possibly one of my favorite dinners, ever.
The following morning got off to a good start. We left the apartment a few minutes earlier than planned and got to the train station right when we wanted to. Instead of taking the bus back to the airport, I decided to take Molly to the airport and train to Milan. We got on the train we wanted and found seats in a good part of the train. The fun, however, stopped there as the train’s departure time came and passed. We checked to make sure we were on the right train and, sure enough, we were. It is not uncommon for trains to be in retardo (late) in Italy but today was not the day. We had left about an hour or two of cushion time so it wasn’t too concerning at first. However, 5 minutes quickly turned into 15, which grew to thirty. Nobody came through the train to tell us what was going on but we stayed put. An hour after we were supposed to depart, a scratchy message came over the intercom and told us that the train was broken and we would need to all move to a train on platform 15 (we were on platform 7 so that was a good walk away). The masses got up and it was a stamped to get to the next train. However, all the rushing seemed to be a waste because the train didn’t leave for another 45 minutes. Our two-hour cushion time had been reduced to 15.
I had never been to Milano centrale to this point so I didn’t really know my way around but all the train stations I had been to had been small enough to figure out with relative ease. Milano Centrale is much larger and much nicer than Torino or any of the other train stations I have visited in Torino but today we were pressed for time. We ran through the train station like maniacs and finally found the bus terminal after about 15 minutes. We luckily caught the bus moments before they pushed off and headed to Malpensa. We had been told by someone that it was only like a 15-minute ride to Malpensa but it was more like a 45-minute bus ride. We knew we were now going to have to be amazingly fast to catch Molly’s plane. However, in the end, we ended up getting to Malpensa 2 minutes after her plane was supposed to take off and ended up missing her flight.
We had arrived at Milan Malpensa at about 12.10 (her flight left at 12.05) and would spend the next 8 hours looking for a flight out. However, the one flight that we missed happened to be the only flight to Edinburgh that day so we ended up having to head back to Torino after 8 hours of searching and frustration. Finally, we booked Molly a flight that would take her to London Gatwick then on to Edinburgh but it was the next day and would be almost 300 euros (Molly’s last flight was only 30 to 40 euros) but it was the cheapest option we could come up with (KLM wanted 800 euros for the flight).
Frustrated and dejected, we made it back to Torino, got a kebab pizza and set alarms to be up 2 hours earlier to catch the earlier train and get to a different airport in Milan the next day. With the Kebab coma setting in, we drifted off to sleep.
When our alarms went off the next morning, we shot up out of bed and hurried to the train station without breakfast or anything, determined to catch this flight. Molly’s school is set up much different than USAC here in Torino in that she can only miss one class otherwise she can fail the entire class. We didn’t want to risk her being too sick to go to school later in the semester so we hurried our butts off. We made the train and the train got off on time, which was a relief. We made it to the Linate airport in Milan and I got to see Molly off. Last time seemed easier however because I was the one getting on the airplane, I had somewhere to go, things to see, distractions and what not so to only have a bus ride back to the train station and a 2 hour train ride (standing up this time, the train was packed) all by my lonesome. I concluded I am no good at good byes but I knew that with each passing good bye, I was getting closer to seeing her again. We realized on the train ride that her spring break trip was coming up in like a week and a half so our time apart would be limited again so it was all going to be alright. I loved having Molly in town. I am very excited to have her in town again!
No comments:
Post a Comment