The next day I left for a conference in Garmisch, Germany. I was dropped off early at the hospital in order to catch a bus to Garmisch. I decided it would be easier to take the bus to Garmisch and then have Sharma come and pick me up. Our friend's the Pextons flew into Paris a few days earlier and then took the ICE train to Germany while I was in Garmisch. I spent three days learning about exercise and manipulation, it was a great class. This winter has been warmer and drier than normal so all of the mountains around Garmisch had no snow. It wasn't as spectacular as I would have hoped but still majestic, you could picture how beautiful it would be normally. I was assigned to room with another therapist from Vicenza, somebody I didn't know before, but he was very easy going and easy to get a long with. Sharma loaded the van with luggage and 5 other people and off they drove to pick me up. I tried to sleep a little prior to them arriving, but like normal, I can't calm down enough to get any sleep prior to a big drive before starting our vacation. I tried, I tried but to no avail. The family and friends arrived at 10pm. I knew if we left at that point we would arrive in Savona several hours before we should be there. We decided to hang out in the lodge for several hours and use their free wifi and time our arrival into Savona better. We left at 1am with the car all loaded up and every seat filled. We drove out of Germany and into Innsbruck Austria within 30 minutes. I was able to make it three hours and then suddenly got very tired. I pulled off at one of the gas stations stops along the Autobahn. I was able to sleep for 30 minutes and then I was back on the road again. As we pulled out of the Alps the fog was as dense as I could remember in recent memory. Our first destination was trying to find the parking garage that we had reserved online. We drove into Savona and found this little side street and practically passed up this tiny little garage. We pulled in and this little Italian man met us at the garages entrance. He didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian, but I showed him my receipt and he motioned to me to give him the keys to the van. I did and he hoped behind the wheel of the car and I got into the back, next thing I know he is driving us to the port, dropping us off and then taking our van back to his garage with the instructions to give him a call when we got back into port. As we pulled up, we parked next to the bus carrying the rest of our group from Germany. They got in literally 15 minutes before us, so it was great timing. We unloaded all of our items from the car and hauled them upstairs to the terminal to await our boarding. We all got there pretty early and therefore could stake our claim to all of the benches that we needed. We took up a large section, full of luggage and kids.
Our boarding group number was 5. We waited patiently until our number was called. We were reminded quickly that lines and waiting patiently don't work if you live in Italy...it is fend for yourself, push and cut to get on the ship. We made our way onto the ship and quickly found our cabin to drop off our luggage. Our whole group was in the same area of the ship, it looked like all of the mormons infiltrated a section of the ship...a section that they lost money on because nobody gambled or ordered alcohol. We made our way to the buffet and loaded up on food. Once there we caught word that the Prices lost one of their young daughters and was looking for her. About an hour later she was discovered, not lost, just with another group of kids and her parents didn't know. We waited for two of our pieces of luggage to arrive, they were sent with the bus because we didn't have enough room in the van. Once it arrived we unloaded all of our clothes into a compact room meant to fit two people instead of five. We employed our inner creativeness to find cubbys, nooks and secrets spots to put all of our items. We attended the 'welcome show' and had a late dinner in the dinning room. So ends the first night on the ship.
