When it rains, it pours

I just got back from Sardenia – an island off the coast of Southern Italy. I almost thought we would never make it. When had quite an adventure getting there. So many things happened and went wrong in the first 12 hours Im not even sure I can remember them all, but I’ll try.

So my two friends Jess, Tara and I arrive at the train station at 7pm. Jess was already tense cause Tara had been late and missed dinner and she had our train tickets. I’m being Ms. Mom, “does everyone have everything…like your passports?” Jess has not brought her passport cause Sardenia is technically Italy and you should only need your passport when you are leaving the country. I’m not convinced this is the case- especially since were eventually getting on a plane. But its too late now. We have 10 minutes for our train, and it’s the last one to Pisa for the night, so Jess decides to risk it. We still very concerned and discussing and calling people trying to figure out what to do as we board the train…
…the WRONG train. Instead of going to Bologna-Firenze-Pisa, we are headed in the wrong direction to Milan. We find this out over an hour after we’ve boarded and when the ticket lady comes and is like what are you all doing? Its too late to get off anywhere and our best chance is to go straight to Milan. We are in shock and decide the only thing we can do is open the bottle of strawberry wine.
We arrive in Milan around midnight. In the great Italian fashion of inconvenience everything is closed -the information centers, the ticket counters…everything. We check the train schedule. Train generally stop running shortly after midnight. The next train to Florence or even Pisa isn’t until 6am. Our flight leaves from Pisa at 6am. Were about to be stranded in Milan. Im about 99% sure our trip is over. Luckily we find a policeman who suggests we QUICKLY go to one of Milan’s airports because some of the buses there run a bit later and maybe we can find one heading towards Pisa. So we get in a cab and speed to the airport. We have 15 minutes. Our cab driver is dodging the tram and also driving on the wrong side of the road.
We arrive at the Milan airport. No buses. Again almost nothing is open except 8 car rental places, which close in 15 minutes. Can we rent a car? No you have to have reservations say some. No you have to be 25. They make some exceptions if you are 21. Im the only one who is 21, but Im the only one who doesn’t carry my US drivers license on me. We only have manuals others tell us. None of us know how to drive a manual car. Jess says she can drive one, but not passed third gear, but that’s not going to work on the autostrada. We’ve been turned down by all but one place. The man on duty heres our story and takes a look a Jess’s ID and ignores the fact that she 20 and rents us the last automatic car on the lot. He also cuts us a huge discount.
At 12:30am we are in a rental car going 150km/h on the autostrada going to Pisa. We have a map, and only supposed to take 3.5 hours. So it looks like were going to make our plane.
We actually arrive at the airport in three hours. We’re feeling good. The airport has re-opened at 3:30 am and in 30 minutes we can check in. The next step is getting Jess on the plane without a passport.
Hell no says the lady at the counter. She calls her supervisor, who says the same thing. Finally we get taken to the head of the airport. We’re praying it some man who we can smile sweetly at. No it’s a middle aged woman. The worst. She’s not budging. Tara tells her our story of how weve spent the last 10 hours getting to this airport. Jess starts to throw her credit cards, copies of her passport and all of her other identification cards on her desk. The woman is like you don’t understand, you would be risking this airline and this airport tons of money. I could loose my job…she decided to let Jess go. Only after Jess has promised to have her passport over-nighted to her while we are in Sardenia. Its Friday morning, so I should be able to get there. She tells us Jess will not be alone back on the mainland without it. (It probably helped that all of these conversation occurred entirely in Italian.)
And then we realize it’s another national holiday…well actually we realize this once we are in Sardenia (thank god) and Jess has called her host family to ask them to send her passport. The earliest it could arrive is Tuesday. We spend most of the vacation convinced Jess may have to stay behind in Sardenia.
Another fun aspect of this national holiday is that buses from the airport to the city are still running, but at weird hours. So we sit for another two hours waiting for the bus.
Finally we make it to our bed and breakfast. (Most amazing place. This woman, Erica, was so sweet and she made up our bed and gave us snacks and made us breakfast.)
So put the disaster story on pause cause being in Sardenia was fantastic. We spent all day at the beach and did nothing. It was wonderful. The water is clear and the little town of Algero amazing. We met some Italians or Sardis our age on the beach and asked them where we should go for the night and ended up getting an invitation to dinner. These guys fixed us nothing but meat. Steak and sausage. And they insisted that we eat all of it! I basically had my quota of meat for the month! It was so good though. Then they took us on a night tour of the old city and the castle.
We had a brief run in with the law in Sardenia. We ran into a road block and everyone had to show ID. None of us had our passports and the guy driving had to get a customary DUI test. I was freaking out cause everything was happening so quickly in dialect. Also, one of my friends didn’t even have any ID on her and so she was taken out of the car and had to go to talk to police and answer questions. After everything that had already happened I guess I was assuming the worst, but in the end we were told by the locals that everything was customary and that the cops reminded us that technically we should carry our passports on us at all times.
We ended up hanging with these guys the second night too. We went to a local bar where a local band was playing Italian favorites. The second day in Sardenia we went to visit Neptune’s grotto. The grotto was pretty cool, but my favorite part was the boat ride there. I love boats, and you didn’t have to travel far before there was literally no land in sight.
Ok so getting back home was pretty uneventful. (thank god). My friend’s host mom had called the tiny airport or Algero and they decided to let my friend fly back to the mainland even without her passport. We left really early in the morning and arrive in Pisa at 8am and we then got to spend the whole day there…but I’ll save Pisa for another entry.