One way to the UK?

The return flight to London on Monday night was about as eventful as trying to get out of London on the Friday! We went to see the Duomo Monday morning then had lunch, and a quick sunbake and then took the train to Bergamo. Mind you, the line to get tickets was well long, so we decided to use the self-ticketing machine which gave minimal change, so firstly Mara had to make a purchase from a gift-shop in the train station to get change, and then we got our tickets, and then rushed to the train which departed about 7 minutes after we boarded! All was going okay except the no airconditioning!!! Man, talk about sweating it out! Umm things got a little funny too when the ticket lady was coming and I noticed, a little bit panicky, that everyone (and I mean everyone) else in the carriage had big long tickets (like a plane’s) and Mara and I had these little postage-stamp sized ones… hmm she took my ticket, inspected it then rambled off in Italian! I shrugged my shoulders and said I don’t understand what you are saying (nice and slow like) and she paused and then managed ‘yellow box’. I was like sorry! DIdn’t see a yellow box, and the gates to the platform were all already open, and there was no sign on the ticket machine! Anyway, she took our tickets and wrote something on them, and punched a hole in them… lucky they were date-stamped from the machine so she could tell we had just bought them – but I mean what was she going to do? Chuck us off the moving train? It didn’t stop at any platforms really! Hmm yeah, waiting at Milano airport was crap! Bad airport to be stuck at, in the departure area there’s one cafe and a huge line of hungry people! The Ryan Air 7pm flight had been delayed until about 1130, and our 10pm flight was ontime… and then got delayed (right on ‘boardind time’ for 30 minutes. Finally at half ten we all went to board, and the stampede began!!! Also joining our stampede were pissed off people from the 7pm flight, determined that they should be getting on our flight because they’ve been waiting longer, and a whole host of other reasons were thrown at the hosties. Anyway, don’t know why all the pushing to get out first cuz once they check your ticket at Bergamo, you then all hop on a bus to drive to the plane, so actually the people last on the bus are the first off at the place… uhh well!

Got home just before midnight, last Stanstead Express left at midnight so we took bus to Liverpool Street, and cuz last tubes had already ran, we then caught night bus to Roman Road and walked the three blocks down Grove Road to arrive home at about 1:15am! What an adventure – we’d rather not have to repeat!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.