Doppio Espresso - SV Does Milan!

As many of you may know I am spending the month of April in Italy. I will be aiming to bring you the sites, and culture of this beautiful country with a distinct caffeinated SV twist!

A few people have asked why are you going to Italy? I am finally getting married to my beautiful partner Alexandra whom has been with me for the last 7 years! She has a Milanese heritage and I have a cycling heritage - hence Italy!

To bring you up to date on what has happened so far:

• I arrived at Shanghai Pudong airport at 9:30pm on Tuesday the 31st of May.
• I was dropped off by Mr. King the lovely lorry driver/minivan pilot who always assists me to move my bike box to and from various airports
• I spent 35 minutes in a line-up to get on Lufthansa
• When I finally got to the check in I was greeted with "Hi, What do you want?" (quite obviously I was waiting in a nasty twisting line for 35 minutes just to see your pretty face love - nothing to do with getting on a plane. . . .)
• I was told they had recently changed their policy and I needed to give them $200 USD to get my bike on the plane . . . even though I was underweight (not me, my luggage. . . )
• I told them that was a huge amount of money, and that I had flown with them before and had not been charged.
• They told me that I could simply leave the bike there if I didn't like it. . . .
• I paid $200 USD.

I arrived in Milan after a brief stopover in Munich where I was pushed in front of by almost everyone from Shanghai. Some of those who traveled with me even went under the barriers to jump the queue. This really upset the Italians who started pushing and yelling at them. The Munich airport police looked on like they had seen this 100 times.

When we finally got through the mayhem of the customs in Munich - our customs lady seemed surprised we spoke English. . . we literally RAN to our flight as it was scheduled to leave 25 minutes BEFORE we got through customs. Luckily we are both fit young attractive people, and running with 300kg with of luggage was good training.

An interesting fact: if you run around Munich airport, stand in line, are pushed and shoved and RUN to catch your adjoining flight for 3km's, you will find that your departure gate is literally BESIDE the one at which you arrived.

We arrived in Milano at around 9:30am in the morning after a beautiful flight over some of the most majestic mountains I have ever seen. The weather in Milano was a bit rainy, but it was a beautiful feeling just to arrive. . .

By the way. . . . . Lufthansa has lost my bike. . . . and I still don't have it. . .

Stay tuned. . . "day one - Milano" will be posted soon. . .