We are off the ship 1st thing this morning, too early for the officers contingent lined up saying goodbye and wishing us a safe journey. Figures! It is us. But it sort of made me a little sad not to be able to say goodbye to everyone and thank them for a wonderful trip. Simon did give us his email address though, so at least we can do that! Which of course we do in the taxi on the way to airport! LOL!

The taxi was another story. He didn’t know where we were located, he called and we kept trying to tell him until finally another driver took pity on us and took the phone away from Ed chattering non-stop in Greek to the guy. 5 minutes later, he shows up! Thank you kind Greek taxi drivers. The trip to the airport is quick, we’re there in no time and our driver even walks us in and helps me with the bag. Sweet. We think he probably has another pick up, so he’s going to have coffee, etc., and wait. But no matter, still very nice.

And then……we sat. What started out as an 11:30am flight, arriving in Milan at 1:10p ends up not being so timely. In the beginning, it appeared to be late. At least in all our apps it showed as late. Not on the airport screen though, so who knows? We’re just hanging out, waiting to see.

Of course to add insult to injury, there is no lounge here in this terminal – only in the main terminals. Heavens! We have to hang with the unwashed masses! And hang we do. Cappuccino and the last cheese pie of the trip at the little cafe by the gate. Oh, and very reasonably priced water, only 75 euro cents. For a decent size bottle. In the airport! Why can’t the US be that way?  Argh. 

And still we wait…we end up having lunch at the bar/restaurant near the gate – we are in the auxiliary terminal or some such thing and the only thing here are gates, the cafe a gift shop and this bar/restaurant. Ok – lunch at the bar/restaurant it is. Actually, it isn’t all that bad. They’ve got some burger special that is really cheap and comes with a beer. So, since we just had that cheese pie, we split the burger deal and actually worked really well.

2 wines and beers later and….the darn flight is 4 hours delayed. Ugh. We’re waiting for them to cancel the whole thing, but surprisingly they do not, and finally, yippee! We have an estimated departure time of 3:20pm. Fingers crossed.

The crossed fingers must have worked, because we do indeed leave at 3:20 and arrive in Milan at 5:09. There goes our relaxing drive up to Lake Maggiore to arrive before the Rageths! At least we are here, and we made a new friend on the way – the flight attendant for our section was lovely and is from the Lake Maggiore area! So, of course we hit it off. She gave us the scoop on the plane, the first one broke down and they luckily had another to replace it. That was definitely luck! A spare airbus or whatever? Not complaining. She even gave us free water (this is EasyJet, nothing is free) when she heard we didn’t get any vouchers for the long wait. Very kind.

Finally out of luggage collection and into our car, we hit the highway, only to realize the stupid GPS is sending us around the other side of the lake to…..take a FERRY!!!! NOOOOOOOO. That cost us another 10 minutes or so when we had to turn around and retrace some of our route to get to the correct side of the darn lake. Geez.

But, eventually we made it safe and sound to the wonderful Hotel Italia, right on the lake in Cannero and a fabulous reunion with Gaby and Sigis.

They come to greet us, help us check in, then escort us down the lakeside promenade to a wonderful dinner right on the lake at Europa. A fabulous meal of Octopus tacos (how could Ed resist), Eggplant ravioli (the description was Panzerotti which is like a stuffed empanada, not ravioli, but regardless, these things were wonderful), a monstrous Bruschetta for Gaby and fish for Sigis. Totally perfect!

After dinner apertifs on the promenade at our hotel, and we are all ready to turn in for the evening and begin a wonderful long weekend exploring the lake with our dear, dear friends. So happy!