Zürich -> Milano's outskirts

Nothing went as planned today, but we eventually made it to Milan...almost.

My own morning was quite pleasant: Ella and nochElla had made plans last night to meet up for one last walk and one last game of ping-pong before their long separation.  And while the girls were off at the playground, Paul came by and entertained our three boys, carefully explaining the rules of tag to the two-year-olds.

While I was sitting out and watching the boys run around and giggle, one of my neighbors, an elderly lady, came down to chat.  She'd never had any children of her own, but she tells me she loves watching them, and she particularly likes watching mine.  And she clearly knows them well.  "They are nice children. This one," she said, gesturing to Alex, "he is very sensitive. And this one," Joey, "He's a tough little guy."  From her fourth story house, she sees more than my little ones: she'd come down to tell me that late last night she'd watched a family of foxes, a mother her own three pups, playing by our sand box, grabbing sand toys in their mouths and flinging them into the air and dragging them around.

While I was enjoying coffee and conversation, Dennis and Brie were off having a far less enjoyable morning, retrieving the rental cars.  After a few alarming telephone calls from Dennis, the two of them finally made it home, well after 11:00, more than two hours after they'd left.

Brie tried to follow Dennis home from the rental place, but the two of them got separated in the heavy traffic, and, somehow, Brie ended up on a road taking her through one of the mountain tunnels, and Dennis had no idea where she was.  She didn't have our address, or a phone, or even a phone number to call. But she did have her ingenuity.

I have to tip my hat to her: she ended up pulling over and finding someone to loan her a phone, and then called the Hertz rental desk, using the number on the paperwork they'd given her, to ask them for Dennis's phone number.  They wouldn't release the number, but they did connect her to him.  Good enough!

It was lunchtime when we finally left, but we really didn't have much food in the house, so we decided to drive for a little while and find what we could on the road.  Today's trip was only supposed to be three hours long: maybe, we thought, we could even get away with snacking on the road and having a late lunch.  Today is Dennis's and my 11th wedding anniversary: a pizza and a bottle of wine in Milan sounded like a lovely way to celebrate.

But, instead, the 11th anniversary will heretofore be known as the sitting-in-traffic anniversary.

To get to Milan from Switzerland, you need to pass through the St. Gotthard tunnel, through the Alps.  When it opened in 1980, it was the longest roadway tunnel in the world, at 16 kilometers. (Now it ranks third.) Because the roadway funnels down to one lane in either direction through the tunnel, with a traffic light at the entrance enforcing low traffic concentration inside, there almost always traffic jams at the entrance.

But we didn't know this at the time. (Ahem, Google maps.)  All we knew was that the traffic was at a complete standstill for a long, long time.  When we saw a little toddler, scooting past the frozen cars on his little pushcart, we decided that it might be safe to get out of the car for a break of our own.  Luckily, we'd stopped for food just before reaching the really bad traffic, so the kids were in great humor.  Particularly Alex, who understood exactly how ridiculous it was to be playing cards on the side of the road.

But there is a bright side: this was probably one of the prettiest places in the world to be stuck in traffic.

If we ever pass this way again, we'll be riding that train.

Three good kids

If we'd taken the train to Milan, our trip would have taken three hours, total.  Today, factoring in the ill-fated trip to the rental car place, we spent almost nine hours dealing with transit.

The inside of the Gotthard tunnel,
posted here because we spent
two hours waiting for this view

All the same, we reached Italy, and eventually found our hotel in the outskirts of Milan.  They'd only opened a few weeks ago, and so everything was shiny new, and the rooms were incredibly large.  However, as is the norm in Europe, they still made us split our family of five into two separate chambers: Ella and I shared a room this night, and, ludicrously, she and I each had a queen-sized bed to ourselves, with enough extra room for Ella to turn cartwheels, besides. But still, I'd call it child friendly: they greeted the kids each with a little pack of colored pencils and a pad of paper, and they didn't object in the slightest to the game of duck-duck-goose that we played in the lobby, over which the kids made friends with an Italian girl about Ella's age.

In fact, our only real objection to the hotel happened when Brie, hypnotized by the shiny ball hanging down into the shower in her room, just couldn't help herself.   The alarm from the emergency cord that she'd pulled was piercing enough for them to need to vacate the room, but no one ever did come check on them...you know, to find out what, exactly, the emergency was.

Geoff eventually had to walk down to the front desk to ask for help.  Which probably means that Brie is not alone in succumbing to the temptation of pulling an unmarked cord.  Indeed, Joey very nearly lulled one in his bath tonight, his hand drifting upward, asking "Heeeey...What's that..."

By the time (7:00) we'd gotten settled, we'd sort of given up on the idea of finding dinner in Milan.  Instead, we asked the front desk for a recommendation, and they gave us a card for a steakhouse and pizzeria that they said was family friendly.

Thank you, Chelsea and Aaron and Henry!

I was a little concerned about the quality of the recommendation when we arrived at about 7:30 on a Friday night and the restaurant was nearly empty.  I'd forgotten entirely and they were nearly empty.  I guess I forgot that were in Italy, where, apparently, the dinner rush begins somewhere after 9:00.  The restaurant, which appeared to be a converted barn, filled up, with a line snaking out the front door, and the noise that our children were making entirely lost in the general din: so yes, I'd say that it was family friendly, indeed.

And the kids had an added treat: I checked the mail this morning just before we left found there a package from our friends Aaron and Chelsea.  I tucked it into the car, to open when the kids got restless, but they never really did, so I let the kids open their presents right before dinner: new books around!  And so Ella contentedly nibbled her pizza margarita all through dinner, completely lost in The Ordinary Princess.

And that left us with the boys to entertain: I cuddled up with Joey, commissioned to draw pictures of the family.  Ella, he demanded, was to be surrounded by books and Alex by kitties, Daddy needed to be at Google, and as for me, I was to be juggling a half-dozen coffee cups.  Joey seems to be as adept as our neighbor at taking measure of our family.

Ella turtlified our
champagne cap

As for our anniversary dinner, Dennis and I picked a few things off the menu that looked interesting, to share: a pizza, some pasta, and a curious appetizer, which turned out to be a plate of shaved meats and little fluffy biscuits.  Except one of the meats seemed to be pure pork lard, thinly shaved.  We gamely ate most of it, but couldn't quite finish it off.  And our dessert, which was advertised as a torte, ended up being a chocolate muffin.  But it was good, and it was made better with a celebratory bottle of champagne.
 
Joey and I left early the restaurant a little early and found a party in the parking lot: someone had left a huge pile of golden streamers, and Joey dove right into a group of children, squealing happily, running around the parking lot and trailing the shiny streamers after them while parents and grandparents beamed happily.  They do seem to love their bambini here, and Joey has the bold makings of an international ambassador.

When we got back to the hotel, we discovered a few hiccups: Ella had forgotten her book at the restaurant, so she and Dennis had to go back to fetch it.  Meanwhile, I cleaned up the boys, and as I was tucking them in, I learned that Alex had knowingly, but for reasons unclear, left his favorite "purple kitty" stuffed animal at home.  He'd packed four other kitties instead, but, facing bedtime, realized none of them would do.

Luckily, a mommy's arms are an acceptable substitute for a purple kitty.