Inevitable complications

Our flight to Marrakech was canceled, sort of. Though the flight number remained, the departure time, the date and even the airport had changed at the last minute (Departing a day later from Milan Bergamo instead of Milan Malpensa). Oops.

This all happened the day before we were supposed to leave, and we were faced with a choice: 1) stay in Milan an extra day, try to find an available room somewhere, and eat the cost of the Marrakech riad we had booked. 2) Try to get a flight to Marrakech for the very next day, and eat the cost of our other plane ticket.

We calculated that we stood to loose pretty much the same amount of money whatever we ended up choosing. We had already booked a riad, and were going to be charged for it whether we stayed there or not. Also, there was the issue of finding a place to stay in Milan for an extra night—there were several big conferences going on in the city that week, and most places were booked. The afternoon was spent web surfing on internet connections that didn't work, making calls on phones with spotty connections, trying to get emails printed out on non-functioning printers, enlisting help from concierges that seemed as lost as we were, and contacting an airline that wouldn't accept our credit card-- but wouldn't take our cash either (I'm no financial whiz, but I think that's a poorly thought-out business model).

After what seemed like hours of comic mishaps, Jacqueline found what seemed like the last available room in the city, in a small hotel a few metro stops away. So ultimately we got an extra day in Milan, and were able to see parts of the city we weren't able to while we were busy scrambling...