A stressful journey back
Our extremely useful host at the studios assured us that taking the 9:30 ferry would leave us plenty of time to get to the airport, and against our better judgement we believed him. The first bad sign was when the ferry left almost 15 minutes late. Then, despite there being twenty people waiting for rides to the airport (10 minutes away in a car) at Mastixari, there were no taxis! After around thirty minutes, one arrived and a bunch of us who were all on the same Ryanair flight piled in. One of the people was a Kalymnian on her way to visit her brother in Grenoble, so we offered to give her a ride, if by some miracle we all managed to make it onto the plane. The taxi driver sensed our desperation and ripped us off -- charging double the going rate, but we were happy to pay it, and in no position to haggle. After ten tense minutes, we arrived at the airport. By this time, the luggage check in had closed, so we had to pay 120 euro to get our bags on, and security sent us on a wild goose chase to get our US passports stamped. The problem is that no one in the airport seemed to know what stamp was needed. At one point they actually took our passports and disappeared for what seemed like ten minutes. Chloe and I eventually made it to the gate, where they had not even started boarding, and walked by the big line (reserved seats again) to collapse in our seats. We gave each other some incredulous looks at having actually made it onto the plane, and then began the long process of trying to drop our stress-o-meters down to normal levels. A short plane ride later, we arrived in Milan Bergamo, picked up the bags, found the Kalymnian, and walked outside to the Ciao Parking shuttle stop. The shuttle arrived shortly afterwards, and the driver took our receipts. Four minutes later we were at the parking, where to my astonishment, our car was waiting for us! The driver had apparently called ahead to have our car driven out of the warehouse. Then it was on the road for Grey-noble, via the crazy Italian autoroutes. Somewhere around Susa, the Carbinieri made us exit the autoroute and take the equivalent of the route nationale, which was stopped dead in a huge column of traffic. After about a half an hour, we re-routed via back roads and discovered the reason: a protest against the proposed new train tunnel. They were waving white flags and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Just what we needed after our relaxing morning. Next, the exorbitantly priced (>40 euro!) Frejus tunnel, through the Maurienne and the Gresivaudan. We then dropped the Kalymnian off in the center of town and then made our way home to collapse.
