flight to Milano...

and i thought i was a decently seasoned traveller...

had my bag checked in at British Airway at SFO, the bag weighted exactly 20kg which was the limit... my boarding pass in hand, i managed to 'check in online' to change from a middle seat to a window seat - i thought, it's all going decently well..

10 hour flight - but there was about 20 new movies and a bunch of other media content available on our individual monitors...
drinks cart came by and they offer drinks WITH alcohol for no charge - i'm lucky if i get a small package of pretzels on other flights!

dinner was decent - one can't expect gourmet on the plane, even if one is a food snob. i had the 'tuscan chicken' which was overly sweet and rice that was too soft, but the bread and salad was good and dessert too. best part was the small bottle of wine it came with.

Being a super lightweight drinker, i chucked the wine and passed into a slumber for 3 hours... with 2 hours left, i finally watched Slumdog Millionaire which i loved... another episode or two of some random tv sitcom, and helloooo London!

London seems beautiful, lush and green from the plane - it was actually sunny, which isn't 'typical' i'm told. We arrived 10 minutes to 11am, and my flight out was 12:25pm, so I figured i had ample time...

except once i got off the plane, i realized that i was flying Lufthansa to Milan - and my luggage was in the luggage claim because BA didn't know that I had another leg of my journey.
After asking a few different BA agents, it seems that i had to do things the long way - wait in line for the customs, go pick up my bag from the carousel, and take a tram over to Terminal 2, walk 15 minutes to Lufthansa kiosk to check in my bag there, go through security line again (the bottle of water I bought at SFO and the extra small bottle of wine of course made sure the security agent had to re-swab my backpack) - then ran Home-Alone style to get to my gate.

I made it on time, because boarding was supposed to be at noon - i got there about 12:05. But the plane was running late so we actually boarded at 12:25pm. whew....


Of course, this little Country Mouse was in awe when I landed in Milano... hailing a cab was easy. right near the exit from the airport, an airport shuttle had ran into a car in front of him, they were off to the side of the road making arrangements. This was a preview of the attitude of the kind of driving one was to face daily in Milano.

i had arrived... everything was interesting, Milano is a big city with lots of dense 5+ story buildings where people live, and beautiful balconies that made street scenic.