Flavors of Northern Italy: Days 0 & 1

Friday 10/1: SMF > SFO > MUC

Mr. E and I are celebrating our return to international travel after nearly two years with a weeklong small group tour to Northern Italy. We booked the trip through the Wisconsin Alumni Association, which partners with Orbridge to provide the travel services. Given all of the continual changes related to COVID, we weren't entirely sure the tour would happen! And the arrangements and requirements are definitely much more complicated now, but we managed to figure out all of the testing and online documentation and made it out of the country successfully. Phew!

A few weeks before our departure, Mr. E received an alert that the final leg of our journey, from Munich to Verona, had been changed due to a flight cancellation by Air Dolomiti. The new itinerary put us on an impossible adventure, having us catch a Saturday afternoon flight even though our arrival in Munich wasn't until Sunday morning. Um... So we ended up needing to move our entire trip back one day, which is why we left on Friday instead of Saturday, thus extending our time away.

Despite a late-night notification on Thursday about a supposed change in our flight time, which could have put our connecting flight in jeopardy, we ended up departing from SMF on time for our short flight to SFO. I needed to work today since our original itinerary had our departure on Saturday, so I logged in for a bit in SMF and then for longer in SFO as we passed some of our layover in the United Club. Too bad the Polaris Club isn’t open yet! But we did get some extra goodies in the regular club, including some lovely sparkling rose to kick of our vacation. 

We eventually headed to the international terminal to board our flight to Munich and got settled into our Business Class seats (or “pods” as I like to call them). The service offerings have certainly been reduced, but we still had decent food, plenty of wine, and comfy lie-flat seats – my favorite, especially for a long-haul night flight. I worked for several hours to make sure everything was ready for the following week but also managed to fit in two movie viewings – “In the Heights” (a nice follow-up to the “Hamilton” performance I went to on Thursday evening with E) and “Black Widow.” Mr. E had also selected the latter, so at a certain point, we were able to just about sync up our viewings and sort of watch it together! 

I eventually stretched out, put in my ear plugs, donned my unicorn eye mask, and launched the white noise app on my phone in order to snooze for a few hours as we made our way from Friday night to Saturday morning.

Saturday 10/2: MUC > VRN + Hotel Milano

Our flight arrived in Munich about 20 minutes early on Saturday morning, around 9:15am. We strolled through the terminal to get oriented and find the Lufthansa Club(s) where we could spend our long (5 ½ hour) layover. The first step was to get some euros in cash from an ATM to have for the rest of our trip. Then, thanks to a cool live interactive digital help kiosk, we headed to the passport control on our way to the G gates in Terminal 2 to be closer to our departure area. Thanks to Mr. E’s Star Alliance Gold status, we had access to the Senator Lounge, so we found a comfy spot and settled in for the duration. 

The lounge was pretty small, with minimal food and beverage offerings, but we did enjoy the coffee, some breakfast items, and the gummy snacks. We took turns leaving the lounge to go on walk breaks throughout the terminal, and during one of my strolls, I picked up a sushi box for lunch. Yummy red pepper in the combo roll! By the time we left the lounge and headed to our gate, I had managed to reach my daily goal of 10,000 steps just from all of the airport walking! 

We had a short flight to Verona that was delayed by nearly 45 minutes, so we didn’t arrive in Italy until close to 5pm. Our bags were delivered pretty quickly, and there was no additional customs or passport control, so we just exited to find a taxi to take us to downtown Verona. Our taxi driver apparently thought he was on the autobahn in Germany, as he raced along the autostrada, dodging cars and rapidly switching lanes all along the way. Yikes! Even once we got into the historic center of Verona, with narrow windy streets, lots of pedestrians, numerous scooters, and occasional bicycles, he kept up the rapid-fire pace. Both of us were relieved to arrive safely at Hotel Milano! 

The hotel is located just a block or so from the arena, and our suite on the 4^th floor had its own large private terrace with a view of the Torre dei Lamberti. The front desk staff was extremely friendly and helpful, and our two-room suite was spacious and comfortable. Too bad we didn’t have time to take advantage of the whirlpool tub with multicolored lighting during our stay (next time???). 

Mr. E went out for a jog and to do some recon around the historic city center while I did a short Zumba workout and then yoga outside on our terrace. 

The weather was just lovely and perfect for dining outside in the rooftop restaurant overlooking the arena.

We had a wonderful server and delicious dinner – summer salad with watermelon, olives, almonds, and cheese for me; open-faced lasagna and slow poached octopus with creamy potatoes for Mr. E (he shared some of the amazing octopus); and a mint panna cotta with dark chocolate to split for dessert. Not to mention the biggest Aperol Spritz ever! And a rather large glass for my Soave white wine as well. 

I’m so glad that our original itinerary got changed so that we could have this evening experience to kick off our trip!