Given a travel related situation, and given a specific question about the situation, summarize the question into a title

[Q]: I am planning a trip to northern Italy. I will start it with two days of Giro d'Italia in and around Genoa and then I will move on to Verona for a javascript conference. I was thinking that flying to Milan (from Sweden) would be the best option and then get around by train. However I just now realized that although Genoa is an hour or so from Milan by train - Verona is more like 4 hours and a stop in Bologna. 

Are there any obvious better way to do this than flying to Milan?

UPDATE: I had it wrong about train from Verona to Milan - it is also 1-2 hours. Still it is a bit cumbersome to travel like this.

[A]: Airport options for trip to Genoa and Verona


[Q]: When taking shared ride vans in the United States are you expected to tip? If so, how much?

To be clear I'm talking about services where you are lumped along with 5-6 strangers in a van that then takes each passenger to their destination from the airport (or vica versa).

It's not quite a taxi (where I would tip) and it's not quite a bus (where I wouldn't tip), but occupies some sort of middle ground between the two.

[A]: Tipping in shared ride vans


[Q]: When paying by card flight attendants usually ask to see your ID, to verify that the card in fact belongs to you. However it seems weird to me that pretty much no other merchants ever ask to see your ID, even when conducting purchases for thousands of euros (e.g. at IKEA).

So why do airlines insist on verifying your ID when paying by card? I understand that there's (usually) no Internet to verify the card balance on the plane (as suggested by TonyK), but how would one's ID help them out in case the card is empty?

[A]:
Why do flight attendants ask to see your ID when paying by card on the airplane?