That's Amore'

So, I'm finally getting off my lazy, temporarily unemployed ass and blog about our trip to Italy. My first mistake was trying to be cheap. My second mistake was ignoring the signs. Instead of staying at a REAL hotel, I figure, why don't we stay on a military base? The place where I wanted to go was booked (Vecinza, an hour from Venice) so I opted for Aviano, which is an Air Force Base. If you know anything about the military, you know that Air Force stuff is hella better than Army stuff. However, I got a little worried when the day before we were to leave, a storm with hurricane force winds hit Aviano. But we ignore the signs and go anyway.

The place has absolutely no public transportation. Like people literally stopped and have to give us rides to where we wanted to go. So we pretty much 1) shopped at AAFES 2) ate at Popeyes 3) went to the commissary. In other words, the same s#$t we do here. Although we did get a ride to a restaurant where we had something yummy called a grappina or something like that. But then we had to bum a ride to get back on post, at which point we both said forget this let's leave for somewhere else in the morning. And thus begins our adventure ...

First stop: the Perdonene train station to get us the hell out of Italian hick town.

Not sure if you can tell from the pic, but this is on the MFing ground. Seriously. There's a handle on the side. You hold onto the handle and squat to do your business. It was crazy.

So we get to Camp Darby in Livorno, cause you know I'm still not ready to give up on this cheap hotel dream. Note to self: Army hotels are NOT cheap. They are expensive, yet half the size as the Air Force. What's up with that? This is where the adventure really picks up, and "picks up" I mean really starts to get annoying and push the boundaries of my newfound peace and patience. When we got our tickets for the train, the schedule put us getting to Livorno at about 5 p.m. Cool. Still enough time to hang out, eat dinner, maybe look for a little club or something. We get to Milan and ask the attendance which track the train leaves from. Apparently, for the train to Livorno, we have simply bought a ticket. Not a seat. OooKaayy ... so we get in line to buy a seat. Now, I'm not going to call any names, but the male portion of our trip duo stood in THE.SLOWEST.LINE.EVER. For real. We stood in line for an hour. Got to the front at 3:58 and the train left at 4. The chick looks at her watch and pretends, if only for a moment, that we actually had a chance at making that one. So, we miss the train. Now I start to get antsy and whatnot and by now I'm screaming on the inside because although the NEXT train doesn't need a seat to be purchased and leaves in an hour, it takes like 6 frickin' hours and we won't get there until 10. Damn. So we sit there, Woodstock consoling me because I'm on the verge of freaking out because I like to plan things, and we didn't plan this trip, and things like this happen when you don't plan!!!! We eat (McDonald's. Pathetic, I know. But everything was closed except for this little hut that only sold drinks and the sandwich shops in the train station. On a side note, German sandwiches are WAAAAY better than Italian ones.

So, 6 hours later, we have our bags, we're here, we just want to get to the hotel. So we walk to the Taxi parking area. No Taxis. We walk back and forth. Nope, still nothing. OK. We're starting to worry. Should we try to take a bus or something? Finally, in the nick of time a Taxi shows up, takes us to post. It takes 15 minutes or so to get there, but costs about 30 euro - about $38. I'm tripping because in Germany you can damn near take a cab anywhere for under 15 but we're tired. We drag our bags and our tired butts onto post and into the hotel where we pretty much fall straight to sleep. The next morning, we get up eat at the DFAC (so much for Italian breakfast I guess), and go to rent a car. I'd hoped we could turn it back in in Venice, but no luck. This is our fly rental. Jealous?

Ok, I'm totally sleepy so tomorrow - for real this time! - part two. Hopefully there will be more pics but Blogger seems to be tripping which is why they're so limited this time. But just in case here's a teaser - dum, dum, dummmm!!!!!