Il Woods saluta dall'Italia

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Greetings everyone,

It's me again, I told you I needed to travel more so I can get Anthony Bourdain's job, well me and the Mrs decided to go to Italy. Ok the real reason is that it's our 10th wedding anniversary and we decided to visit Italy to celebrate. This trip was clouded with doubt the last few weeks, we live in Texas and Hurricane Harvey made landfall about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi where we live, but luckily we made it through safe and without any damage to our home. Harvey wasn't done the storm went north and rained on Houston for days causing catastrophic floods throughout the city. Guess where we're flying out of to head to Italy? That's right Bush International Airport in Houston, TX so after days of monitoring the damage and whether we have to reschedule our trip, the airport reopened three days before we're scheduled to depart. The next challenge was actually getting to Houston since many of the roads into the city were flooded. We were able to find an alternate route into the city, it took a little longer than usual but we made it to Houston which was a huge relief considering what is going on Houston.

Travel day was longer than usual since we had to get up early to make it to the airport but checking in at the airport and going through TSA was no problem, we had almost two hours to spare by the time we sat down at the airport to eat lunch. Our flight was from Houston to Amsterdam, I'll keep my description brief it was not pleasant, the guy sitting next to me would not stay still and I don't know if he wore deodorant to Amsterdam. The flight from there to Milan was pretty quick and was more spacious than the last flight. So we're finally in Milan, off the plane to pick up our bags, interesting thing about Italy, no customs. Yeah we got our bags and just walked outside to find a cab to the hotel.

Cab drivers are full of information and usually the most interesting people you will meet in a city. Our cab driver from the airport did not disappoint, he told us about George Clooney's homes in Lake Como, Madonna and why their isn't any terrorism in Italy? The answer, the mob, yep he said the mob makes sure there isn't any terrorism in Italy thats why it's safe here. I have to admit I can't remember hearing about a terrorist attack in Italy, so who am I to argue? It took about twenty minutes of weaving in and out of Milan traffic to make it to the hotel and we're exhausted, so we check in to the hotel. The manager explains the details of the hotel, gives us a few city maps and tells us where the train stops are and how much it cost, after that it's up the room.

We take a nice long nap and wake up starving, it's Italy so of course we get some pizza, lucky for us there is a pizzeria on just about every corner near the hotel, so I grabbed us two pizzas and come back to the room to eat. Pizza was delicious and a tradition of ours when we're in Europe is finish the night with some gelato, so I head down the street to the gelato shop and get us each a cup of gelato. That's it for the first day in Italy, I'll be back soon until then arrivederci.

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