Introduction
After checking out of the Radisson we met up with a friend for lunch and since we were in Korean Town we figured why not try out a Korean BBQ place. We settled on a place just a few doors down from the Radisson on 32nd Street, New Wonjo . The bibim bop that I had was very good and filled me up for the rest of the day. After saying goodbye to our friend we headed back to Penn Station to JFK for our 5:00 pm flight to Milan's Maplensa airport.
It was Christmas Day so the airport was pretty empty. We easily checked our bags and proceeded through security in 20 minutes total. We headed on the people movers to the second part of Terminal 8, which houses AA to our gate. The boarding area was empty until about 30 minutes before boarding time when suddenly everyone on the plane showed up and started crowding the gate area. This is the earliest I have ever seen people hover around the gate waiting to board. It got even worse when the boarding process started and the whole plane....literally everyone on this plane...decided that the invitation for Business Class passengers to board was actually their turn to board. The poor Business Class passengers had to sift through the people to make their way to the boarding area and the gate agents turned at least 30 people away for not boarding at the proper time. We were in group one so we had to force our way through the hoard and slowly boarded to our seats in 30 A and B.
Unfortunately the plane of choice for this route is a 767 which looks like it is still stuck in the 1970s. The Business Class consisted of 2-2-2 configuration with standard domestic looking seats, it didn't even look like there was much of a foot rest or recline beyond the normal recline. The Economy Class was in a 2-3-2 configuration and we were lucky enough to get a pair of seats on the 2 section on the left side of the plane. But when we sat down it was clear that it wasn't going to be that much of a luxury. The leg room was about as much as you get on a regional jet. I'm only 5' 8" and my legs were close to touching the seat in front of me (see picture below). It got even worse during the flight when the person in front of me reclined to get some rest and I lost all of my space entirely. Even better was the pair of teenage boys behind us that screamed and yelled for the whole boarding process, taxi and first two hours of the flight.
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| Not Much Leg Room |
We were lucky and had favorable winds so the flight was only scheduled for seven hours, which was good because much longer would have been rough. The in-flight entertainment was a shared screen for the whole cabin and featured two movies. To listen you had to click the dial on the armrest to get to the proper audio channel and hope it would actually tune to the correct channel.
For dinner there was a choice of chicken with vegetables or vegetable ravioli. I choose the chicken and was surprised that it was actually pretty good, a little dry, but not that bad. The potatoes and mixed vegetables were tough and didn't have any flavor and the white wine they served with it was listed as a pino grigio but it tasted like a $3 chardonay mixed with jet fuel....that bad.
After dinner there was only about four hours left in the flight so we both tried to get some rest. Kelsey was lucky enough to pass out for a few hours, I on the other hand was only able to sleep for an hour or two and read for the rest of the flight.
About an hour before we landed they started a "breakfast" service. By breakfast I mean they gave us a crossant, some jelly and a drink.....I was really really disappointed in this, I would have expected at least some yoghurt or some fruit.
We landed about an hour early and quickly taxied to the gate at MXP. We arrived at the gate and sat, and sat and sat until finally the Captain came on to let us know that they had parked him just past the reach of the jetway and they were going to push us back, but that would take about 10 minutes to get the ground crew over. About 15 minutes later a set of busses pulls up and suddenly people behind us start streaming out the now open back door. The Captain comes back on and says, "Well I guess they are going to have you board off the back and bus you to the terminal...thanks for flying with us."
The bus took us the quick 500 yards or so to the terminal and we made the long walk to immigration where we quickly cleared immigration and customs and picked up our bags on the way. Once out of customs we followed the signs to the Malpensa Express train and bought two train tickets to Milan Centrale station from the ticket desk. Note that there are automated kiosks, but they would not take either of our credit cards, even ones with chip technology. The total fare was 11.00 Euro per person and took about 40 minutes to get to Milan Centrale where we made the quick walk to the Hilton Milan, and our day improved significantly.
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