We live here now.

Pictures are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah11918

Plane ride was good - uneventful. We were seated in an exit row for both legs, and for the transatlantic trip, we were right behind the bathroom so we didn’t have people in front of us (a bit more space that way) and it was a short trip to the loo! (And, easy to know when it was empty - very convenient.) Joe slept for most of the flight, although he did spend at least a couple of hours awake, which is more than he usually does.

We arrived just before 7:00 a.m. local time and caught the train to Como. A little bit of confusion, since the line leading out of Malpensa airport is called the Malpensa express to Milan, and I knew we didn’t want to go to Milan. But, it turns out we did in fact want to take that line for a couple of stops to the next transfer point, then switch to the Como-bound line.

The train station was literally a two minute walk from the hotel, so it was a good thing Joe was wearing one of his geek shirts . . . I mean, past conference shirts, because someone standing at the bus stop outside the station just looked at him and said, “I think you want to go that way.” He informed us that there was no need to hail a cab since it was only 200-300 meters away. Good thing, or the same thing probably would have happened to us as did to another conference attendee: he hailed a cab who put all his baggage in the trunk, then refused to take him once the driver found out where he was going.

Our hotel isn’t the conference hotel, but it’s right next door. The conference hotel seems to be very modern whereas ours is more “charming” (as it says on the website). But, we’ve been pleased with the hotel so far, even if the conference organization has left something to be desired.

Since we arrived so early (9:00 a.m. local time) in the morning, our room wasn’t ready, and wouldn’t be until 1pm. So, we found no shortage of people to grab food with, and spent a couple of hours in the hotel lobby with.

Food and company on the first day was good. We checked into the room around 3pm and I relaxed in the hotel room until about 7:30 pm while Joe checked out what was going on over at the conference hotel. Dinner then back at the hotel by 11:30 pm for an early night since we’d been a good day or two without much sleep.

This morning we had the hotel breakfast buffet which was quite satisfactory: pastries, bread, cold meats, fruit salads, yogurt, cereal, juice and coffees. I went out to take more pictures while Joe went to the conference for the morning. After just uploading the morning pictures, I’m off to meet Joe for lunch next door.

Ciao!