Subject: Surprise Trip to Italy (long winded)
Author: Jeffrey Buick
Date: Jul 8, 2004, 3:34 PM
Post ID: 1717122851
I knew that I loved my wife but this is ridiculous... Two weeks ago my
wife had me convinced that we were going on vacation up in Canada for a
week as a birthday present to me for my 30th (yeah, I'm trying to catch
you guys). So we show up at our departure gate at Detroit Metro Airport
and the destination said Amsterdam, my wife (Dana) turned to me and said
"Do you want to guess where we're really going?".
Dialogue was as follows:
Jeff- "Are we going to Europe?"
Dana- "Yes"
Jeff- "Are we going to Italy?"
Dana- "Yes"
Jeff- "Are we going to Mandello?"
Dana- "Yes"
She made reservations to rent a BMW touring bike for a week and roughly
mapped out an itinerary with hotel reservations for some of the nights.
Here's a brief day by day look at our trip, it was awesome!
Day 1: Fly into Milan and head straight to the motorcycle rental company
to pick up a BMW 1150 touring bike. Ride north to Como and check into
our hotel and then continue around Lake Como up to Mandello del Lario to
go to the Guzzi Factory/Museum. We arrived right at 3:00pm which was
good because the museum is only open from 3:00pm~4:00pm on weekdays.
The museam was great, I had an idea of what it would be like because I
had seen pictures of it before, but it was cooler than imagined. The
tour guide let me cross the ropes and get a close look at some of the
racing machines even though I don't speak a lick of Italian (I think
that drooling in universally understood). From there we continued up
the east coast of Lake Como and then took a ferry across with the bike
and rode back down along the west coast to Como for the night. The lake
is beautiful!
Day 2: Left Como went back through Milan down to Maranello and visited
the Ferrari museum. Again, a lot of very beautiful machines. They had
a ton of engines out on display and cutaways showing their technology in
brakes / clutches / suspension / etc... Very cool! From there we
continued on to Bologna for the night.
Day 3: Went to the Ducati Factory / Museum only to find out that we
were 15 minutes late for the tour and they would not allow us to enter.
They said that we could wait for the next tour, but that started in 5
hours so we opted to leave. I was bummed but it turned out okay because
we went down to Florence for the day and that is an incredible city.
The architecture is breathtaking and there is a lot of people and action
there. We continued on down to a small town in Tuscany where we stayed
at a 1600's hunting manor. Our room had 20-foot ceilings and the whole
place was great.
Day 4: Stayed at the hunting manor for another night but did a day trip
up to Cortona (the movie Under the Tuscan Sun was filmed there). It was
really cool because it is up on a hillside so you can see for miles and
appreciate how beautiful the country is.
Day 5: Rode to Pontedera to the Piaggio Museum (Vespa / Gilera) and
spent an hour there. They put a lot of effort into that museum and it
was almost as cool as the Guzzi museum. Beutiful displays of some
really unique machines. Continued on to Pisa and checked out the
Leaning Tower, not much else there. Hopped back on the Beemer and rode
to Genove for the night. It is the port town that Columbus was from but
it was kind of a dirty city and didn't seem like it had that much to
offer for tourists.
Day 6: Rode the bike back up to Milan and turned it in (it was a bit of
a relief because people drive like mad in the city and it was nice to be
able to relax a bit. The tollways are a bit expensive but the road
surface and the views are great). Spent the day walking around and
shopping in Milan.
Day 7: Back to Detroit (about 1.5 hours to Amsterdam and 8 more to
Detroit).
I still can't believe that Dana planned the whole trip and that I had no
idea where we were going. I am going to be hard-pressed to match this
when she turns 30 next year!
Later,
Jeff Buick
Detroit, MI
1972 Eldo LAPD
1974 Eldo LAPD
1974 Eldo Civilian
1972 V7-Sport