New Jersey to Milan

Every so often you hear about “mistake” airfares, where the airline mistakenly advertises something really cheap that is simply not believable.   You never really hear of anyone snagging one of those fares, until now.  Every so often there are posts on message boards dedicated to mistake fares but we never seem to grab them before the airline realizes the mistake and pulls them back.  Several months back Chris noticed a Norwegian airline advertising extremely cheap airfares from US cities to most major cities in Europe.  The fares were being ticketed to US based airlines and to be honest it seemed too good to be true.  The only problem was that these fares were not available on just any flight; you had to painstakingly search to find the ones that worked.  Chris noticed on the message boards that someone grabbed tickets for several days in February from Newark to Milan.  Rather than search through lots of different dates looking for something that worked, Chris decided to book the same dates.  We ended up grabbing a flight from Newark that left for Milan, Italy on a Thursday night and returned on Monday morning for only $135 each!  We booked the flight and eagerly awaited the flight to be ticketed.  When it did about a day later we selected our seats, checked our credit card statement to see that it posted and started planning our trip.

Driving from our house in MA to NY to catch a flight out of Newark was not really an issue for the price we paid.  We were lucky enough to get a ride to the airport from Chris’s dad and we arrived about 2 hours before our scheduled flight.  Since our flight would be on United we did not have status and we would have to check in with everyone else, go through the security lines with everyone else, and board with everyone else.  There would be no skipping of the lines this time.  Since we had no checked bags for this short trip, only carry-ons, we were able to check in via a kiosk in the airport.  The line for security was not bad; we were through security in under 10 minutes.  Since we had so much time to kill we figured we might as well head for the American Airlines Admirals Club, where we would at least be able to sit in comfort and have free drinks while we waited.  Unfortunately the Admirals Club was in a different terminal.  Luckily, there was a shuttle bus run by United on the inside of security that took you between terminals.  We boarded the bus and made the 10 minute drive to the terminal where the club was located.  When we got there we found out that club was in another part of the terminal which would require us to leave the secure area and re-enter the secure area run by American.  Since we did not have a ticket for American we did not think security would let us through so we again boarded the bus back to our departure terminal.  We ended up killing close to 30 minutes in this whole process so by the time we reached our gate we only had 15-20 minutes to wait until they boarded.  The boarding process on United was much more efficient and organized than American which we usually fly.  Rather than everyone standing around the gate waiting for their group to be called they have separate lines for each group.  We think Southwest does it this way too. They then board one line at a time and the whole process seemed much more efficient.  We purposely grabbed a seat near the back of the plane hoping that if the plane were not full that the back would be the least crowded.  The plane was not completely full but we did not have enough room to spread out like we might have liked.  We had no problem getting overhead space which is really all we wanted.  Each seat had a personal television loaded with lots of TV shows and movies.  That plus the fact that the scheduled 8 hour 15 minute flight took less than 7 hours made it seem to go by pretty quick.  We even got a nice view of the sunrise above the clouds as we were getting closer to our destination.

We landed a little after 8 AM and based on our spot in the back of the plane we were the last ones off before the flight crew.  We quickly made it through customs and immigration and found our way to the train station which would take us into Milan, about 35 minutes away.  We arrived at the station about 2 minutes before the next train was to leave so rather than rush we took our time navigating our way through the screens on the ticket machine.  We got the tickets we needed then tried to figure out how to validate our ticket before boarding the train.  Before leaving we learned that the tickets need to be validated via a machine before boarding the train.  Conductors do not always come around checking tickets but when they do you better have a validated ticket or risk a fine.  We figured out the validation process and boarded our train which was already sitting in the station.  The train ended up leaving about 15 minutes after we boarded and the ride into the city took another 35 minutes.  

We then found the taxi stand and took a cab to our hotel, where arrived just after 10 AM.  Luckily they let us check in early.  Given that we had platinum status with the hotel chain (Marriott), they upgraded us to a junior suite which was quite large and even had a balcony!  They also gave us access to their lounge where they were still serving breakfast.  So after leaving our bags in our spacious room we grabbed a quick bite to eat.  We returned to our rooms, took showers, took some pictures of the room, and proceeded to nap for about 3 ½ hours.  

The view from our room's balcony

Our room's balcony

Very useful power pack we got from our Uncle Tim and Tony for Christmas

Thanks Jose and Alex and Mina and Justin for the converters!

View from the room at night with supermarket across the street

After waking up we lounged around for a little while before venturing out.  We were getting hungry so we decided to just walk and stop to eat whatever looked good.  After walking a few blocks from the hotel in the rain (the hotel lent us umbrellas) we found a small bakery/pizzeria where we grabbed a slice of pizza to eat.  We walked back towards the hotel but before we got there we stopped in to check out a supermarket which was conveniently directly across from the hotel.  We always enjoy checking out supermarkets when we are away from home as sometimes you run into some unusual stuff.  The only thing unusual that we noticed was that they provided gloves to put on while handling produce.  Everyone was using them and we thought that was a good idea.  We ended up buying some snacks before heading back to our room.  We also stopped off at the lounge once again to stock up on water and juice for our room.

Our pizzeria/bakery

Our hotel