About Me

I am a 45 year husband and dad, currently adjusting to life back in the United States after living in Italy for a little over two years. I love spending time with my family, cycling, model railroading, mosaics and watching TV and movies.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Final Inspection - Off to the Hilton Near the Airport

This morning was our final morning in our apartment...sniff sniff.  Katrina headed out to to Linate early to exchange our rental car for a mini van.  I swept and mopped the apartment floors and finished cleaning the bathroom.

When Katrina returned, we loaded 4 large suitcases, 4 small suitcases, and a bike box into the mini van.  It was packed tight.  European mini vans are a bit smaller than American mini vans.

The real estate agent, the apartment owners father, and our relocation agent arrive around noon for the final apartment inspection. Its funny.  We spent 2 1/2 days giving the apartment a deep cleaning (it was not clean when we took possession)  and all they really seemed to care about was making sure we left the furniture and all the light fixtures.  The biggest conversation was all about transfer of utilities and how to do that!

Our relocation agent had the owners agent write out and sign that all was good.  They weren't going to leave us anything like that!

Anyway, we grabbed our backpacks and Stevie that cat and left our Italian apartment for the last time.  Surprisingly, no tears were shed.

On our way out we stopped to say goodbye to our portania and her family.  Anna, her husband Ivano and their daughter Martina were always welcoming to us and took a big liking to Brandon.  Brandon would sometimes go down to Anna's office and spend a couple hours speaking Italian with her.  Early in our time in Italy, she asked Brandon what kind of pasta he liked.  He told her Bolognese and a few days later she made some homemade sauce for him.  This past Monday Ivano made homemade pizzas for us.  And yesterday, they gave Brandon an Italian flag to take home.


 Martina, Ivano and Anna


Martina, Brandon and Anna


Brandon gets a big hug


Ivano and Brandon

After we said our goodbyes, we headed over to la Piccola Gelateria to say goodbye to our gelato guy.  



It was time to head to our hotel.  We are staying at the Hilton Garden Inn near Malpensa airport.  We didn't want to leave all of our luggage exposed in the car, so we carried it all up to the room - well, we used to carts to carry it all up.

Stevie was fairly comfortable.  He came out from under the bed and explored the room a bit. He even tried to jump through the large mirror!

Dinner in the hotel.  Some TV watching and early to bed.  We need to be at the airport by 4am tomorrow.

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