Late last summer, Meredith and I approached CVCA’s administration with the idea of planning and running a European trip for CVCA staff as a fellowship-building outing. We planned on going to London since there are direct flights out of nearby Pittsburgh airport, and the administrators gave us the go-ahead. We sent out an email, and there was some solid interest. When we needed to start collecting money for the trip, it ended up being our friends Meredith “Neuf” Neufeld and Susan Abramson. Susan had never been to Europe before, so that was exciting.

With a trip of just four people, it gave us some flexibility, such that when we found out that going to London was $750 and going to London and then on to Milan was $490, we asked Neuf and Susan if they minded changing the destination. They were game, and so our spring break Northern Italy trip was born.

Since Pittsburgh airport is only ninety minutes from our house, we decided to leave on Friday after work. That gained us an extra day of touring when compared to flying out of Toronto. We left the house at 4:30 and got to the airport around 6:00 and were in line around 6:30 before the counter opened at 7:00. And we saw two CVCA students and their parents who were on our flight to London, on their way to Spain. Of course.

We boarded the plane, and then we got delayed ninety minutes because of lightning in the area and then because of a malfunction in the pump of the fueling truck. That trickled down to our missing our scheduled Milan flight by about fifteen minutes, and we had to wait for four hours for the next flight. That all went smoothly, but did mean that by the time we got to our hotel, it was bedtime (around 9:00 pm). We were determined to do something Italian, so we got a gelato (ice cream) store recommendation from the hotel clerk and walked the three blocks to get Italian ice cream. Score one for the tourists.

This vacation ended up being ambitious, with our moving to a new location every day. There’s too much to see in Italy. Tomorrow, we’re off to the northern Lake District, but we hope to get some Milan touring in at the end of the trip. Now, we can finally get some sleep in a real bed after thirty-six hours with only some fitful naps on the plane.