....Brooklyn".
Not quite. Unlike that famous Beastie Boys line, for us, it was no sleep 'till Vogogna. Yes, that's right, Vogogna Italy. Where is that you might ask? Hell if we know. All we know is that we had a long day of travel, with no sleep, some crazy German Driving through the Alps. Add in 2 brand new languages, and the typical Clemens navigation skills, and you have an interesting day of travel.
So here's the re-cap of day one:
7:00am Lake Stevens, WA:
Wake up and depart Lake Stevens for SeaTac and our flight. Everything happened right on schedule. We got to the airport a couple of hours before our flight and cruised through the airport barely slowing down for security. Evidently we got pretty lucky b/c we talked to a couple of people in the terminal and it took them almost an hour to get through security, so we must have gotten extremely lucky with that.
1:00pm SeaTac, WA:
Our flight to Amsterdam departed right on time, we got on the plane (Airbus 330-300)and came to realize that my seat was still screwed up. They did have us up near the front, but they had me in the very middle of the row. I tried to sit in my seat, but that was NOT going to happen. Fortunately, this nice Dutch lady was kind enough to only give me a dirty 5'6" look when I asked if she would be willing to switch with me. When I stood up, she really understood why I asked and was cool about the whole thing.
The flight was cool, lots of movies, and neither of us were able to sleep...it was a long 10 hours. Both of us felt like the airline was trying to feed us to the point of passing out from a Diabetic coma. It seemed like every time we turned around they were shoving food in our face.
The part of flying that usually freaks me out the most is landing, I still can't wrap my head around how they can land a 3 story building on a 1/2 mile strip of concrete at 200mph. It scares the crap out of me every time. But fortunately, Sir Isaac Newton prevailed again and we landed smoothly. From there it was off to the races to catch our connecting flight from Amsterdam to Stuttgart.
Upon arriving in Stuttgart, we literally got to choose which gate we went through at customs. The red gate had 2 customs agents standing there doing nothing, and the green gate was a direct line to the parking area...we obviously chose the green gate, and it was "Wilkommen im Deutschland". Somewhere I heard Dick Cheney groan.
10:00am Stuttgart, DE
Clemens and Judith picked us up at the airport, and we rushed off to their apartment downtown to get a bag packed for our weekend trip to Italy. Clemens and Judith jabbered away in the front seat and it suprised me to what degree my German had stuck with me. Poor Chris had no clue what was going on, so Clemens was kind enough to play tour guide as we made our way to their apartment downtown.
After a quick lunch, Clemens laid out the travel plans. "It is a five our trip from Stuttgart to Vogogna. From there we will stay at a hotel, and tomorrow we will tour a place called Lago Maggiore". Yeah...we'll see.
Once on the road, it was typical Clemens. "Oh...my mom said we should stop in Zurich...oh....we'll go this way, through the country, its a prettier drive." We definitely appreciated the amount of time he took playing tour guide, the problem was that I think we missed half of the fun b/c we were so tired.
After a quick meal in Zurich, we were off to the races again. We found this really cool mountain road that was pretty fun to drive...definitely a route more suited for a motorcycle, but it was pretty fun in Clemens's sporty little VW.
10:00pm Vogogna, IT
Finally...after 9 HOURS we arrived in Vogogna. The funny thing was, we actually arrived in Vogogna 1 hour prior to checking into our hotel. Clemens and Judith were in disagreement as to where the hotel was, Judith wanted to ask someone, and Clemens wanted to find it. The funny thing is, we drove by the very well signed, very well lit hotel 3 times before we finally believed that it was our hotel. Chris and I were too tired to care.
The best part of the trip at that point was that the bed was comfortable, the hotel was safe, and we knew the next day would be better.
I have attached some pictures in the "Photos" section.
Tommorrow its off to Lago Maggoire and Milano.
We'll make another post soon...until then.
-Shane & Chris
