Italian Odessy-Travel by Plane, Train, Car, Boat, and by Foot!

On a recent trip to Italy, the travel gods truly tested not only our patience, but our resourcefulness. Murphy's Law was working in full force. All travel plans usually have some snags that pop up, but this trip was one for the books. To be fair, we had a fairly complex travel schedule set up, so clearly there was lots of opportunity for things to go wrong, but still....

Over the next few posts I will recap our travels, the good and the bad, and share the things we learned along the way.

We decided to go through Zurich and take the train through the Swiss Alps to Milan, then another train to Venice. We planned for a 3 hour layover, what we didn't plan for was the 2 hour delay our flight would have on the way out, which now gave us one hour to connect and was starting to cut it close.

Upon arrival at the ZHR airport, we booked it off of the plane (thank god we carry on and didn't have to wait at baggage claim) and headed to the train terminal to see if we could still make it (after immigration/customs we only had 40 min). At train ticket office we were informed that we *should* make the train, but there was a strike in Italy, so the train may not go to Milan. What? Where the hell will it go if not to Milan? He said we could take our chances, or fly. Nope, not at $600 a ticket for the flights leaving that day, even on the budget airlines. So we ran to the train, made the connection and were on our way to Milan.

Or so we thought....A few hours later the train stopped in Chiasso and we were told to get off the train, as it could not enter Italy. Great. Luckily we had technology on our side, and looked up the nearest rental car location, which was in Como a few km across the border. Except we couldn't get a cab to take us across the border to Como. We were told we had to walk across the border, then get a cab to pick us up there. Walk across? He said is was a little over one km away. So there we were dragging our luggage across border control and we actually walked into Italy. Got our rental car and drove four more hours to our final destination of Venice.

The lesson here: Build enough time into your itinerary for the unexpected, or have a back up plan. Even though we were exhausted, the train ride was beautiful!