Sño Paulo Hotel, continue to Milan
2 March 2002: Our flight would leave in the evening of the next day, so we slept till afternoon, we got a buffet lunch, hung around till the evening till we could catch the last bus of our group to the airport. Today's aircraft was an MD-11 as well, but it was not the same machine as yesterday.
3 March 2002: Milan to Zurich
We were surrounded by Italians when we arrived in Milan, no wonder. I'd never though of Italians in this way, but returning from Brazil the contrast was incredible. Airport personnel had a dour look and a very unfriendly manner. What a difference from the friendly, smiling Brazilians!
There would be a flight to Zurich at 5 in the evening, so we'd need to wait about 8 hours in Milan. There was a Crossair flight at noon, but the Alitalia check in lady said we couldn't take this flight (carrier regulations). We had a lot of fuss with her (she wouldn't let us talk to her supervisor) till she actually told us where the single Varig representative in the airport actually was. He was a nice fellow who actually did endorse us to fly on the Crossair flight. Varig personnel is invariably very friendly and helpful, if a bit disorganized at times. We were in Zurich just after one. Whew, that sure was a long trip back from Brazil, about 40 hours in total!
We'd seen so much in these three weeks to Brazil and I was surprised to discover that Brazil had much more to offer than I had imagined. It is indeed a very large country. We had no bad experiences, no robbery, cheating, delays (except the return flight) or breakdowns. My lingering cold was the most irritating exception and I guess it was caused by my not being used to the large-scale air conditioning in Brazil.
Brazil is definitely a country we'd like to continue to explore, further regions being the Amazon, Rio and surroundings with Ouro Preto, Curitiba, Mato Grosso and Iguazu.