As our Italian sojourn neared its end, we thought that the disastrous beginning we had that gave way to a beautiful foray in expansive mountain ranges of western Dolomites would end on a perfect note. But alas, it’s not meant to be.

A locked door incident at the accommodation, where we struggled to re-enter our apartment, on our penultimate afternoon presaged the precarious situation we were about to find ourselves in on the last day of our trip.

Our host preempted us of yet another transport strike in Milan which could threaten to unravel our travel plans to the airport. We didn’t think much of it as we were leaving pretty early the next morning, and we were not that far from the train station anyway.

How wrong were we proven when we spent half an hour trying to catch a tram from different stops around the accommodation on departure day without any luck. We thought we lucked out when we caught a bus as an alternative to the train station, but the bus too decided to end its service after a few stops.

We were stranded and had barely 2-3 hours to make our flight. We decided to walk the remainder of the way to the train station. With a bit of luck and some running, we fortuitously made the hourly airport express train service at the station, which had already been delayed for half an hour.

When we finally reached the airport and checked in slightly behind schedule, we naively assumed that our ordeal was over. Far from it, little did we know that one last trial awaited us before we were allowed to board our flight home.

Right before we reached the gates, we found ourselves in long queues at the immigration counters. With the earlier delays, we didn’t have much of a buffer before boarding time, so we got a little anxious when we saw the crowd. Fortunately, the queues moved breezily along, and we made it with some time to spare.

At last, we were home-bound.