God's Greatest Gifts

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Surprise, Surprise. This morning we were up early, beating the elderly people again, and down for breakfast around 6:50. We dragged our suitcases down to the bus stop intending to catch the 7:20 bus which came around 7:35 because today was apparently an Italian holiday. A stray german shepherd dog guarded us and kept us company in the meantime. After we reached the Sorrento train station, we boarded the train to Naples. This is the beginning of our hectic travel day.

We decided to get off at the Napoli Garidoli train stop, but begain to second guess our decision to get off the train because we didn't recognize the stop from our previous trip to Naples. Luckily, we were in the right stop and hurried upstairs to buy our tickets to Switzerland. Unfortunately the early train was completely booked, therefore our only option was to take the train at 11:50am. To kill some time, we walked around to find an empty bench. We settled down next to what seemed like a sweet little Italian who spoke little english. After a few minutes of trying to communicate with her, she proceeded to pull out a small pill box full of drugs to sell to us. We quickly deserted that bench.

After a snack at McDonald's (Allayna finally got her normal nourishment), we boarded the train to Milan. After finding our seats, we broke out our handy dandy bicycle locks to secure our suitcases to the luggage rack. We were relieved that our seats we all together in the same car. The five hour ride seemed to go by quickly but we were anxious as we got closer to the station knowing that our lay over was only supposed to be 25 minutes. When our train came to a sudden stop before it ever reached the station, we started to get really concerned we were going to miss our train to Zurich. After receiving some reassurance from an Italian couple on the stopped train, we started to feel a little bit better. Finally our train made it to the station and we literally RAN to our connecting train. Once again, although things didn't go as planned, they worked out in our favor; our connection to Zurich had already been delayed 20 minutes. This meant that even though we were panicking, we had plenty of time to make it.

On the train to Zurich, we knew we were getting ready to be out of our element when the intercom on the train was speaking in German, a language foreign to all of us. Things continued to get even more interesting...30 minutes later, the train stopped again. This time we were apparently at the border of Italy and Switzerland and our train was chosen to be searched by the "border patrol," as policmen and drug dogs raided our cars. After yet another delay, our train was back on track in the right direction.

As we made our way thorugh the Swiss countryside, we were so glad we decided to take the train instead of fly, which was our original plan. The scenery was majestic as we saw snow capped mountains and waterfalls along the way. We had calculated what time we would be arriving in Zurich based on the previous delays but somehow still managed to miss our stop. Fortunately, when we got off the train there was a nice English speaking gentleman that led us to the ticket station, helped us buy our tickets and guided us to the correct platform. Thankful for how everything had worked out depsite the inconveniences, all we could do was breathe a sigh of relief.

After a few more complications, we finally arrived at the train station in Lucerne, our final destination, at 10:30pm in the rain. Using our poorly detailed travel book map, we attempted to find our way to our hotel in the dark through a mass of slightly intoxicated Swiss citizens who were celebrating a national Swiss holiday (imagine that). After unsuccessfully navigating the streets we ran into a group of Swiss, including a younger boy who could speak English well. Once again we were saved; his grandmother had to walk right by our hotel on her way home. She was kind enough to let us follow her as she led us right to the front door.

We were greeted by a Scottish concierge with an extremely joyous attitude. He even had candy for us, this was an excellent treat after a long day of travel. Not to mention FREE working wireless internet. This hotel isn't as nice as the others, but the internet makes up for it all. Our room also has a beautiful view of a river.

Even though the day didn't go as planned, it was apparent that God was watching over us as we finally made it to our destination safe and sound.