Day 2

Dave here!  It has finally begun and the excitement in the air was palpable, probably because we said, “I’m so excited!”.  Doug and I met up at the airport around 5:00 and by the time the flight boarded were at each others throats.  No, just kidding.  We actually had come up with a bunch of funny things we need to do videowise and/or blog-wise, we are quite the comic writing machine!  We didn’t have the same seats so we talked with the Linda at the gate.  Doug told her that we were meeting up with our sister in Chicago to then fly on to Munich and she was all excited for us, without  hearing the BEST part of the story.  She took care of getting us all seated together for the flights she was able, even calling to Lufthansa airlines in Chicago to arrange the Chicago-Munich leg.  So, as we were following Doug’s travel rule #2 and boarding last he casually asked if there were any bulkhead seats or exit rows available.  Linda looked and said, “Well, we’re supposed to charge extra for these seats but since you’re flying onto Munich, I’ll let you have them.”  So we got a $50 upgrade for free just by asking.  It’s nice to see that customer service isn’t dead yet!

Wendy was at our gate waiting for us upon our arrival in Chicago.  We had to go to the gate to get our new boarding passes and then grabbed din-din at Chili’s Too.  Even that was fun, as we were all joking around and enjoying the start of our time together.  A running theme for the trip was established during this time, because I always sing a little snippet when people use phrases that remind me of a song, we joked around that by the end of the trip we’ll just be communicating via songs.  By the end of the dinner we had already done Journey, Boston, Bob Seger, and more I need to ask them about.

The flight to Munich was one of the longest feeling flights I’ve ever been on.  Not in the, I need to get OFF this plane way, it just seemed to take forever.  They served us a snack right away and then a dinner and said that a few hours before we land would be a breakfast.  Well, Doug and I watched “Vicky Christina Barcelona” on the plane’s personal TVs after the snack AND ate our dinner and somehow only 2 hours had passed!  Of course, no international flight would be complete without a crying baby and we had one 2 rows away!! Doug and I moved right onto watching “Kingpin” with Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray and Doug fell asleep in the middle of it.  I decided to put my laptop away and try to get some rest. It was now the “lights off” portion of the flight and I got up  to stow it in the overhead bins.  When I opened ours up, Wendy’s headphone kit case fell right onto the head of the guy in front of her!!  I was very apologetic and he was understanding to say the least.  I felt awful, even though I had no way of knowing that would happen.  So I put it back in the bin, this time in a better spot and as I was trying to put my own headphones in my bag, somehow in the dark I didn’t see that everything was shifting and the same kit fell on the same guys head AGAIN!  If I weren’t feeling like such a jackass it would have been hilarious.  Okay, it was hilarious but I couldn’t laugh about it then.  While Doug and I did all these things, Wendy watched “The Women” and The Secret Life of Bees” but wasn’t able to finish the latter.  I woke up a couple times and thought we were getting close to landing, though I have no idea why I thought that.  Turns out that we were only halfway there!  Ugh!  When they served our extremely light breakfast, they gave us some rolls by Rubschlager.  Doug laughed at the name and used it in a few sentences, quickly making it another running theme for the trip. Eventually we landed and went to our next gate, where Wendy and Doug took naps on the benches as we waited for our bus to come and take us to the plane.  We had to board the plane to Naples via the built in steps and so I took that opportunity to do a Nixon-esque double peace sign picture.  Wendy didn’t like the short flight to Naples, it was a bit turbulent.  I, however, had no problem at all sleeping and was awake for a very small portion of the 1hr and 15 min flight.

It was now 4:30 and we got our rental car (a cozy Ford Fiesta Wagon equipped with Tom Tom GPS navigation) with no idea of what we were about to experience driving to our hotel.  Rush hour congestion and insanely close merging and driving was only the start.  Once inside the city, narrow streets and alleyways along with parked cars and mopeds zipping in between impossible gaps made it a nerve racking experience.  Tom Tom got us close, but when push came to shove, we asked a local man in his 60’s for directions.  And by WE asked I mean, he recognized that we were frozen in the middle of a small street with no idea of which way to go and came up to us asking where we wanted to go. He was very nice and was kind enough to literally walk us to the Hotel Il Convento.  I drove the car along with the luggage porter another ¼ mile to a parking garage where we left it for the night.  This would pose a problem the next morning. 

(Doug is writing now)

We checked in, brushed our teeth and quickly got ready for dinner, as we were beginning to get hungry.  The Rubschlager rolls were not sticking and we were in the mood for some local, substantive Neopolitan cuisine.  The front desk manager at our hotel recommended the Trattoria Medina, just about ¼ mile away.  We walked to the Trattoria and walked in around 7:15 and the restaurante was empty.  The hostess snapped at us to “come back at 8”.  We decided to go next door to the “deli” side of the establishment to get a bite to tide us over and had a chicken, tomato, and arugula salad and a pasta w/ham dish called Fritata something or other and a bottle of chianti.

We toasted the beginning of our trip with a “salud” and enjoyed a nice conversation until it was a little past 8:00.  We moved next door to the restaurant, where there was just one gentleman enjoying a pizza.  We strolled past the wood burning pizza oven and sat down.   The inside of the tratorria was very traditional with exposed brick and lofted ceilings.  Our waiter “Chito” brought us Italian menus, which he quickly switched to English menus when he heard us talking.

We ordered a bottle of Aglianico red and a Caprese salad for “3” and he brought us 3 huge plates of Caprese…very delish, but we easily could have shared one.  We all ate about 2/3 of our Caprese and decided to take home the rest.  We weren’t starving, but we decided to order one pizza, the Confa with salami, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, basil and cayenne pepper, which was recommended by our waiter.  We finished off our meal by savoring a small chilled Limoncello, the perfect way to end our evening.  As we were all tired, we walked back to our hotel around 9:30.  We left the balcony door cracked a bit for some fresh air and drifted off to sleep on our giant, stiff crib-like mattresses with the sound of cars, motorcycles and scooters rushing by on the streets below.

Wendy woke up around 1:30 to use the bathroom and could not get back to sleep.  I woke up as well (Dave, needless to say was still sound asleep) and we talked, deciding to leave earlier than planned for Montalcino to surprise Jeni on her birthday morning. 

(Dave writing)

The plan was to surprise Jeni at the beginning of Winery Tour that started promptly at 11AM and we still had to make the 4+ hr drive from Naples to Montalcino.  We wanted to be there at 10:30 so we had time to surprise he and cry and stuff so we planned to get up at 4 so we could leave by 5. Since they were both unable to sleep, they woke me up a little earlier than planned and Doug was going to head to the garage to get the car while I showered.  I did my thing and Doug still hadn’t returned.  10 minutes later he showed up and said that he couldn’t get into the garage because it was locked down for the night…even though the front desk people at our hotel told us it was 24hr access!!  There was someone there when Doug ran the buzzer but they didn’t speak any English and hung up immediately. The stringy pansy of a front desk person wouldn’t keep calling for us and we were left with no other option than to wait until 5am and have them try again.