After a shortened 'night' of about 5 hours, we arrived in Milano Malpensa at 6:29 in the morning. Things went smoothly, until we arrived at Passport control.......unfortunately at the same time as 2 other flights. It seems like this caught the airport officials off guard. It took about 15 minutes to open up more than 2 control positions. In the end it took us about 45 minutes to get through the queue.
The good news was that our bags, which had flown down on the earlier flight to JFK, were there waiting for us! The joy in small things!
Then we were off to rent our car. This went reasonably well, until the agent told us we did not have a 'Gold' reservation. I had to dig through a suitcase to find our Hertz Gold number. The agent was actually very nice and found exactly the car we had rented.
Off on the highway headed to the Valpolicella/Barolo wine region for our first night's stay. The first stop was on the Autostrada to stretch our legs, have a pitstop and an early morning coffee! The rest stop bars (Auto Grill) are actually very good!
Once off the Autostrada, the drive on back roads through the northern wine country was really breathtaking.........really helping us pay attention and not fade away too quickly! This apparently is the height of poppy season and the color was staggering.
We arrived at our hotel, Relais Villa d'Amelia, around 11:00. Andrea had emailed them last night and explained that we might get there early.........and it turns out they were able to check us in right away, and even upgraded our room to a suite with a large balcony terrace. The sun was out and the vistas from our room were breathtaking! That being noted, we immediately collapsed for an hour long nap. We didn't want to sleep through lunch, which ended up being outdoors on the main courtyard.........which was so relaxing we could have drifted off to sleep there!
After that we opted for another short 'lie down' and then headed out to the pool. The pool was heated, so no problem with the water temperature. A little laziness at the pool and then back to our terrace for another rest! From there we slipped into a further 'blur' zone, just relaxing and unwinding. We had a dinner reservation for 8:00 and went down to the courtyard again for a pre-dinner aperitif......actually a really nice aperol spritz.......why can't we make these this well at home?
Dinner was amazing and we had no trouble sleeping!........and our car had a relaxing night also under its canopy!
