Ridgewood Italy Trip DayOneTwo

Day One, Monday: We flew British Airways to London and then on to Milan, Italy.

After “crossing the pond”, over 10 hours from start to finish, we finally arrived in Milan. Unfortunately our baggage did not, thank you BA. Of course this was a mere two days before the inauguration of their new Terminal Five. It took years to design and build terminal five. That would probably explain why all but one of us had no luggage and 5 people did not receive their luggage for another three days!

During the flight, the movie system on the plane didn’t work and one of the flight attendants seemed very concerned about this. She had us fill out complaint forms about the movie problem. However, after we finally landed and the luggage was missing, oh well. No complaint forms to fill out here. Welcome to Italy!

Then, just as we were about as disgruntled as could be about all things foreign and especially British, we met Jonathan, our very British tour guide for the remainder of the trip.

Jonathan, however, quickly became very helpful, informative and as funny as you could be for a Brit with a very dry sense of humor. The adults enjoyed him from the beginning although it took him a while to warm the kids up. “He’s not funny, I’d rather sleep than listen to him” was the comment when explaining to the kids that they should be paying attention to him. “Why should we have to listen to him”? Well… maybe because he told us where we were going, about what we were seeing, what we had to prepare for next and occasionally to make sure that we take everything from the bus when we get off because we’re switching busses and this one will soon be on it’s way back to some far away city and we’ll never see our stuff again. But that wasn’t important then, was it?

So those on the front of the bus, mostly adults, were paying attention to Jonathan and enjoying some very funny comments and interesting history, while those on the back were either sleeping or discussing the size and color of the cars on the highway or the bartering process they used for their new Coliseum key ring or something as important as that.

And so it went for most of the trip other than a few times when Jonathan interacted with some of the students individually, slowly winning them over. Then, on the morning of last full day of the trip he went to the back of the bus and told dirty jokes. All of a sudden he became very cool, and well worth listening to. He became “The Man”.

I’m spending extra time on Jonathan because he was an important part of our trip. With the help of our teachers, Jonathan made the whole trip smooth, organized, informative and filled with great things to do everyday and we still had plenty of free time.

One more Jonathan story. On the third day, while on our way to Florence he announced that he would memorize all of our names in the next few minutes. Then he slowly walked through the bus, spent about a minute talking to each of the 35 of us, none of which he had ever met before, after which he then proceeded to address each and every one of us by our names without forgetting one! That was pretty incredible. And then there was his personal love story of Rosa the Gelato girl. Anyway, Jonathan was a great guy and tour guide and we all enjoyed his humor and knowledge throughout the whole trip. It was very sad parting with him at the end of the trip.

Day Two, Tuesday: Shortly after landing, and meeting Jonathan, we drove through the countryside, with the Alps in the distance, to our first attraction. The beautiful and picturesque setting of Lago di Como (Lake Como). Second home to George Clooney among others. A little time to walk around the town square, eat, shop and take a boat ride on the lake. The weather, a little nippy but dry.

On to our first hotel. The Como-Grand Hotel with rooms upwards of $166 per night. This very fancy old hotel had keys like I’ve never seen before. Real keys (not cards) with a heavy brass chain and tassels. You aren’t even allowed to take these keys out of the hotel. Rather you give them back to the front desk when you leave and pick them up when you return. A hotel so classy that, unbeknown to those of us under the age of 20, they had all eyes on this restless busload of teenagers from America that had just invaded their precious hotel. That watchfulness came to light when a very slippery coke bottle “fell” out of one of our young student’s hands as he was standing on a fourth floor balcony not more than an hour after we checked in to our first hotel. So much for dinner at the hotel, it probably wouldn’t have been very good anyway.

So, off to a last minute restaurant for pasta (the usual first course) followed by a delicious sea bass with spinach. That’s when we found out pizza would have been a better choice for that meal and all those that followed. This was based strictly on the numbers of the overwhelming majority. Fortunately, for the adults, the meals were preplanned and we didn’t have to live on pizza until the last days of the trip. In hindsight I have come to the conclusion that the pizza and Jonathan’s dirty jokes should have been introduced at the beginning of the trip.

As for the slippery coke bottle incident, Mr. St. John had a serious talk with the all guys. The culprit, to his credit, reacted as an honorable young man should and confessed to what had happened. This truly gained my respect. And with this, all the kids took it down a notch. I think this helped to assure that the rest of the trip was a little less eventful.