Arrival - Eventually

Coffees: 3, Gelati: 1

Well, I've made it to Italy - finally.  Got to Melbourne Airport bright and early.  Marched through check-in, security and customs and on to the airport branch of Cafe Vue for lunch.  (I figured I start eating as I mean to go on.  No meal is too insignificant to be fussy about where and what I eat.)  I was still in work mode, moving briskly from one task to then next, ticking them off.  The waiter at Cafe Vue was insufficiently brisk and I was quite unnecessarily (and uncharacteristically) rude to him.  He was deeply apologetic and made so much of a fuss over me that I felt like a complete bitch.

However, long-haul travel is very good at teaching you lessons in patience and humility given you are stuck in a closely packed metal tube, with little ability to influence the outcome of your journey.  I was soon taken down a peg and made to move into holiday/slow mode.  Bad weather/congestion meant while we boarded the aircraft promptly in Singapore, we sat in a queue for an hour before we could take off and consequently got to Milan late.  A combination of Italian-style peak hour traffic (gridlocked in all directions - north, south, east and west) coupled with a mad plan to (apparently) dig up the entirety of downtown Milan meant the airport shuttle bus trip took almost 3 hours rather than the scheduled 50 minutes. The very fast train from Milan to Florence was, on several occasions, the rather slow train and on one occasion the totally stationary train.  When I finally made it to San Gimignano I was 3 hours later than expected and the entire trip took 36 hours door to door.

On the plus side, I got here safely as did my luggage and the weather is, in the words of Google's translate function "sunny and delightful".  I also got to practice my Italian as I had to reschedule my taxi for the last leg to San Gimignano twice.  I've discovered that while, in spite of my painfully slow speech and undoubtedly dreadful accent, I can be understood when I speak Italian.  I've also discovered I can rarely understand the replies.  A small flaw in my plan.

I know this blog is meant to be focused on food and wine but I've consumed no wine so far and the less said about the food available on planes and in railway stations the better.  The most I can bring myself to say is that it is edible.  However, the coffee here, even in railway stations, has been excellent.   Strong, but not burnt, and with very little in the way of adulterants such as water.  It is the only reason I am still (mostly) conscious at this late hour (around 8pm local time).  Dinner was a gelati (melon and pistachio) and a slice of margherita pizza at the first place I came too.  I would rate both quite edible but can't say much more.  My standards are slipping already.  Sorry.  I'm promise to do better tomorrow.