Disorderly. Chaotic. Stormy. That was the unlikely situation we found ourselves in on either end of our Italian vacation. Fortunately, the rest of the trip were pretty smooth-sailing and we basked ourselves in the beauty of Dolomites.

As our plane touched down in Malpensa Airport, we got the first inkling that the trip could be off to a bad start as rain pattered down over the dawn skies of Milan. The downpour continued relentlessly into the morning as we wandered the streets around Duomo with our luggages in tow.

Trouble brewed around noon as we were informed that due to the wet weather, the river had overflowed onto the streets surrounding our accommodation. We braced ourselves and bought slippers as we were determined to wade through the floodwaters. Then came the death knell as we were notified that the power went out too.

We gave up and promptly booked a hotel in the Central area as we sorely lacked sleep having flown in on a redeye flight and have dragged ourselves around for the past 8 hours. As if we weren’t unlucky enough, the train decided to skip Central station and we ended up having to walk back from the next stop.

Unbeknownst to us, a huge protest was unfolding right on the roads leading up to Central station and that was the reason the train did not stop there. As we neared the hotel, we felt our eyes sting as the police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters. We saw several of them scurrying away into the side roads as we dashed for the hotel doors.

We made it safely and the worst was finally over, or so we thought.