What can you say about a travel day? The Pollos gathered at SF International at 1PM, waited in line, waited in another line, waited in a third line and got on a plane to Paris. The stewardesses brought a round of champagne, and we toasted to our newest adventure. Hard to say how completely giddy four 40 year old guys can get, but we were very happy and excited to be leaving. Air France has great food, but crappy movies... Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owens and something in French that I put on my eye-shades and ear hat and dozed through. The Simpsons episode was great. Air France poured wine, apartifs, and more wine, but no water, it was very dry. Night came and went very quickly, and after 10 hours we touched down at Charles DeGaulle. 
July 14, Bastille Day, and we are in the Paris airport with no chance to join the French in their revelry. DeGaulle is an amazing and beautiful airport. It took us a full 25 minutes to walk from our arrival terminal to our departure terminal. And then, oddly, after we walked down the jetport, we boarded a bus and were shuttled right back over to the terminal we had just left to catch our plane to Milan. After take off I got a view of downtown Paris and I could clearly see the Eifel Tower before we entered the cloud cover. A very long wait for luggage, Jeff's bass case the last bag to arrive.
Our man Lorenzo meets us outside the gate. He is not that familiar with the Milan airport so we stumble around to find our van, which is a most excellent FIAT, and is already filled with drums and amps. The first word we learn in Italian is "caldo" which means hot- moto caldo.
We load into the van and figure out a plan. Since we don't have a gig tonight, we don't really have a plan. Rush hour traffic is awful and Lorenzo's new GPS isn't much help, Jeff is convinced we are going in circles. We took turns nodding off in the van while we were stuck in traffic. Our goal was to find a hotel for the night near a restaurant that is a favorite gig spot of Lorenzo's, The Millwakee 50's Diner (Slacktone will stop here in September, but it is completely empty and dead during the summer months). As we pulled into a first hotel, Lorenzo told us a humorous story of Los Straijackets going all mud-shark at this place- the hotel told us they were sold out, but perhaps they didn't want Lorenzo's repeat business.
We found another hotel in Varedo, which is somewhere north of Milan. The motel is very nice, but clearly a place that is happy to service lovers as the rooms are available in 4 or 6 hour stays. The rooms also features mood lights that cycle through a pastel color wheel and the wonderful prefab showers that have 5 choices of water jet selection, not to mention a few channels of hard core porn. There is a little problem when we get our rooms as "doble" means a double bed, not two beds. A hot shower took the half inch thick layer of airplane scum and I felt like a new man. We met up to go to the diner, which is a near copy of Max's diner in SF, or any 50s style diner in the US, except that the owners are clearly serious fans of rockabilly, and the music playing over the PA is very obscure 50s, until the Michael Jackson tribute video comes on, but by then we are ready to leave. Someday we will have Italian food, but tonight we have cheeseburgers and Belgian beer. The owner offers us a round of drinks, so Jono orders a rum and coke, made with Cuban rum. Very nice.
Back to the love hotel for sleep, which comes quickly after being awake for 32 hours straight.
On the plane, the young couple in front of us had an 18 month old. During takeoff, he was belted to mom's lap, sleeping peacefully. Once airborne, the staff provided a bolt-on-to-the bulkhead bassinet for him. I have never seen this in all of my years of air travel. I wanted one in my size.
ReplyDeleteAt the Paris airport on layover, the kid next to me wanted to practice his card trick on me. Ferenc got a photo.
Once we arrived, met Lorenzo and suffered rush hour traffic, we found some housing. I was tired, hungry, and less-than-agreeable. The transition from solitude to groupthink always troubles me. Luckiliy, I travel with very tolerant band mates.