Italy and Greece 2006

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Gail has worked all year for this moment. And I'm happy to just tag along.

From the beginning of the school year last August Gail has been setting up this class trip for students at her school. She has advertised, mailed-out all kinds of memos, helped organize fund-raisers, conducted meetings and co-coordinated everything with EF Tours all on her own time. At times I thought she just might lose it and say the hell with the whole thing, but now that it's time to leave she'll actually get some time to relax. She will still have to deal with teenagers whining about roommates or lost Ipods but that stuff will almost be a pleasure compared to all the months of false starts, cancellations and arguments she found herself in the middle of.

We will be flying out on Delta from JFK (yecch) to Milan. There we will meet up with our tour guide from our European tour last summer, Jurgen Sahl. I think the kids will like him. He's half Liberal/half anarchist in his political beliefs but very knowledgeable about every place he took us in Europe. He's quite a character. He had a million stories - all of them funny. Like the stereotypical German he's very organized and well-educated. He seems to speak every language in Europe. I don't agree with most of his opinions but they are well thought out and he's an equal opportunity offender. He owns a restaurant in the Canary Islands and is a surf bum when he's not conducting tours. He's considered one of EF's very best guides.
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We had to board Zelda the hyper German Shepherd while her buddy, Ezzie the mutt gets to stay home with her keeper, Joan. She'll be stopping in a couple times a day to feed her and let her out.

Our group of 51 (less Tyler's girlfriend, Jen who is meeting us at the airport) met at the high school where we caught our chartered bus that ferried us to Kennedy Airport. We allowed plenty of time to get to the airport and another couple hours to get through security once we arrived. We needed it! Traffic was a mess on this Friday afternoon. It took us 4 hours to cover what normally takes around 2.

The Delta terminal at JFK was under construction and a big mess. The check-in people were rude and unhelpful. Gail, her Mom and I were lucky enough to get a fairly nice agent but others in our party were forced to repack their overweight bags and in one case, a young girl was conned out of $100 for "over weight" luggage. It seemed like it took forever to get through security.

We still had plenty of time to sit around and wait for our flight. As usual it was a mad scramble to get on as soon as the gate agent announced that the back 5 rows ONLY were boarding. I swear 100 people must have been in those rows because they all got in line and boarded. Gail is always very calm when this happens but every time I flip out. She logically argues that we'll all get there at the same time, but the complete disregard for the rules irritates me. I hate having to crawl over the people in the front of the plane who got on long before they were supposed to. By the time we usually get to the back of the plane all the overhead bins are full. On this occasion we were lucky and could actually stuff our bags right above our seats.

I really don't remember much about the flight over. There were no individualized entertainment units and the food was unexciting. I was able to sleep off and on for most of the trip.

The best news was that we arrived in Milan the next morning right on time...

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