February 16 - Finally in our apartment

Well it has been a long 2 days. It all started well with our flights to Montreal and then to Munich which were on time. But when it came time to board our flight to Florence they announced that it was cancelled. Everybody started walking fast to the service desk which was quite a ways away. We were lucky being in the first quarter but it still took a very long time. They had a systems failure caused by a construction crew accidentally cutting a communication cable in Frankfurt that affected every Lufthansa flight in Europe.

Also the Florence airport was closed at the same time because of a rare fog. Just our luck. We were finally rebooked for a 9 pm flight almost 12 hours later than our original flight.

Since we would only be arriving around midnight we were told to meet our landlords husband under the plane. Yes she said under the plane. He works for the same airline that we were rebooked with, air Dolomiti as a mechanic or something of the sort. Their English sometimes is a bit off so not sure what he does under the plane. She said that she would tell us how to recognize him close to boarding time. He would have the keys.

She sent us a series of pictures of how to enter the apartment, what  he looks like, the outside door, what the door inside looks like, the Wi-Fi password etc. Unfortunately we never got to meet her husband under the plane because when we arrived at the Florence airport after 3 tries to land unsuccessfully in the fog our plane was rerouted to Verona. It was past midnight by then.

We were told to pick our luggage from the airport and they would bus us to Florence. Unfortunately our smart tags inside our suitcase showed our luggage still at the Munich airport. As we, along with about 15 or so other people filled in the required forms for lost baggage the busses were called.

We arrived at the Florence airport at 5:00 in the morning .We waited a couple of hours to contact our host so she could sleep since she had kept in contact with us until we left Verona.

We finally arrived at our apartment at 8:45 very tired after 2 sleepless night. After a shower and a short nap we headed to explore a bit before our host came to explain how everthing works. A bit more exploring and a bit of grocery shopping and an early night for us.

It was not the arrival we had talked about the last 6 months but we are here safe and sound albeit without our suitcases. Fortunately we each have 3 days of clean clothes in our backpacks along with our electronics and camera.

This will certainly be a memory that we will talk about for a long time.