I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, saw the sun in the sky, and flew out of bed. I checked my watch twice, and then pushed Jeff out of bed. “We didn’t get our wake up call” I informed him, and I flew downstairs to see if I could catch the taxi (if it was even there). It was, the driver fast asleep in the front. I banged on the window to wake him up, Jeff threw our bags in the back seat, and we were off at a breakneck speed to get to the airport. We showed up just in time to watch our flight status go from Open Check In to Closed. In disbelief, we went to the desk. The flight didn’t leave for 40 minutes yet, and we had no luggage to check. Surely they would waive us through.
Hah. No such luck. We were informed that Ryanair has a strict check in policy, namely that all passengers must check in 40 minutes before departure or lose their seats. I would gripe about airline security here, but really, it’s not a bad policy. It’s just one that we weren’t aware of. So, we had to pay 40 pounds a piece to get put on standby for the next flight to Milan.
Here I am, unhappily waiting it out between the flights:
We had planned to do some shopping in Milan, but when we got there we decided to check the train schedule first to see when trains departed for LaSpezzia. We were shocked to see that the next train departed in about 20 minutes, and then there basically weren’t any more. There went shopping in Milan, but we couldn’t be upset since we were just grateful that we didn’t miss that connection as well. 
We bought our tickets and shortly thereafter we were on a train for LaSpezzia and the famed region of Cinque terre. We arrived at our hostel, checked into our room, and promptly made our way back out to explore the streets and find something to eat.We settled on a lovely little pizzeria, and tucked into exquisite woodfired pizzas and a decanter of wine, toasting the beginning of our trip in Italy.
Later that night, we gazed out the window, watching the people pass below us.
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