The jetlag entry

I am writing this while laying in bed at 4AM in our lovely BnB in Marcon, Italy, just outside Venice. Actually, I wrote most of this 24 hrs ago while sitting outside the Malpensa airport near Milan, but didn't have an internet connection with which to post it...

It is 3AM, we just arrived in Milan at the Malpensa airport. We have no Euros, can't hire a taxi. Can't rent a car, the shops are closed. So, we sit outside (ed. slept inside) on a bench until 7AM for the car rental companies to open. Oh well, that motel we prepaid for was probably infested with cockroaches anyway, LOL!

We've past the 24 hrs of non-stop traveling mark now. Even though we aren't actually moving, I still count this as traveling since we have no place to call home until we reach Venice this afternoon.

Things we've learned the hard way so far about traveling Italy:
1) Get your Euros ahead of time at your bank, you must call the bank with 3 days notice to get the exchange. The exchange rates at the kiosks in the airport are a total rip off.

2) Give yourself a day before you catch your next flight out of London. You never know if your plane will get diverted to another airport due to severe thunderstorms, causing you to arrive 3 hrs late, when nothing is open.
PS, don't fly late in the day so you don't run into the nothing open issue in the first place.

3) Use a REALLY good underarm deodorant because 10 hrs on a plane is rough on everyone around you in a 10' radius. Actually, I stunk BEFORE I got on the first plane.

4) If you can avoid it don't prepay for your Motel/Hotel. You can't be sure if you will make it to said motel after multiple flight delays.

5) Carry a lot of healthy snack bars and fruit to hold you over between rare opportunities to have a decent meal during transit.

6) Even on Virgin Atlantic, eating the Vegetarian entree gives you bad gas.

7) Givn a choice between sleeping on a metal bench or paying a crazy taxi fair to and from your motel room just for 6 hrs of sleep, choose the motel, because driving 6 hrs on little sleep really sucks.

OK, so that sounded rather pesimistic, but all in all we really are having a good time! We took a very leisurely route half way to Venice to see the country towns and avoid the insane toll road rates, and REALLY love having our TomTom One GPS unit with European map. It makes it effortless to take countless detours without getting lost. We stopped along a lakeside park and I took a 2 hrs nap on the grass with the gentle lake waves lapping nearby. Our BnB in Marcon, Venetto is really nice, clean, quiet, and very reasonable at 60 Euro/night. Here's their website if you are interested: http://www.vrbo.com/151976

Birds are starting to sing, I'd better get back to sleep for a few hours...
Ciao!

George