Today was supposed to look like this. Wake up early, get to Luton Airpot, about 1hr outside of London, fly to Milano. Spend day with German and Nubia. Grab train to Florence. Drink wine and eat pizza. But NO… it didn’t go as planned.

We had our first “learning” day on this trip.  We underestimated how long it would take to get to Luton and how strict the airline’s check-in policy was. Consequently we arrived later than expected and the airline would not let us check our bags and we were forced to miss our flight 😦 There were no more flights to Milano from that airport until Thursday!  F%CK.  We ended up finding a flight directly to Florence leaving at 4:05pm from Gatwick, 2 hours south of Luton Airpot. UGH. We decided to bite the bullet and accept our major screw up and book that new flight and travel all the way back thru London and south to Gatwick airport.

We finally arrived in Florence and took the airport bus to the train station in the city centre which was only a few blocks from our AirBnb. Thank God!  After checking in and getting some great suggestions from our host we headed out to eat our first proper Italian meal and boy was it delicious.

We were so hungry, we had bruschetta to start, followed by Margharita al prosciutto and fresh tortellini al ragu,  with a 1/2 litre of the vino della casa and finally tiramisu to finish. WOW – delicious:

We learned a valuable lesson today. We definitely need to stick to our 2 hr window before departure rule. Tomorrow is a new day and we are happy to be here in Italy for the next two weeks.

Ciao!