A day spent mostly in Pisa airport Thursday 2 June 2011

We've had better days. It started off OK, we went for a walk down to the Levanto beach before checking out of the hotel, and saw a number of board riders making the most of the surf (yes, if the wind is right, you can have a bit of a swell on the Mediterranean). But things started to go astray at the station. The good news was that the railways weren't on strike. The bad news was that the carriage numbers were from the back of the train to the front – and of course we were in carriage 8 and so were at the wrong end of the platform. So we got on board and managed to thread our way half the length of the crowded train with our 2 suitcases. But at Pisa airport, things got worse. Our plane was delayed, eventually leaving 3 3/4 hours late. I had factored in a bit of spare time at the airport anyway, to allow for contingencies (which also fitted in with the train times), so we ended up sitting at the airport for about 7 hours. It did occur to us to make a rush trip to the Leaning Tower, but this would have been complicated by the fact that even though the flight was delayed, Easyjet's check-in times for our baggage weren't changed (so we had to wait for check-in to open, and they closed as if the plane was on time). And just when we might have gone, the rain came, which (to coin a phrase) put a bit of a dampner on the idea. The day was topped off at Berlin, because we exited the secure part of the airport without realising that we had passed the point of no return, and had to go the “Lost & Found” office to arrange to have our baggage brought out to us. Needless to say, we got a taxi in to town (from Schonefeld) – no experimenting at 10 pm with the local transport options as suggested by Lonely Planet kindly provided by Ang & Kev. But the Adina apartment here in Berlin is very modern and reasonably spacious, so we ought to be comfortable.
EDIT - We subsequently received an email from Easyjet apologising for the delay.   Nice thought, and of course we don't want planes that have technical issues to fly, but just the same we would have preferred not to have had the delay.