After a particularly irritating series of situations of being cut off in line by 3 very rude people. (Remember, I promised this blog would not be politically correct. You knew that from the beginning. If you are offended please close your browser, turn off your computer, and pledge to no longer be my friend because you don't get me.)
We just got back from 4 full days in Milan and boy did we have a good time. (I'm warning you now, this is going to be a long post. You might want to get a snack and take a potty break. I'll wait...)
9:09 am Thursday morning our train left from Zurich HB on a direct route to Milano. (Another question-why are city names spelled differently depending on the language. 'Crystal' is spelled C-R-Y-S-T-A-L whether you spell it in English, or German, or Swahili. It's a proper noun; it should be spelled the same! Milan is an easy one but just about every town is spelled differently - I really don't need any additional help to be confused.) It was a 4.5 hour trip and we had 2 of the 6 seats in a compartment. A compartment, for those of you that may not know, is 3 seats facing forward and 3 facing backward in a little room with a sliding glass door. The aisle is along one side of the train. So it goes: window, seat, seat, seat, sliding door, aisle, window. Kyle read just about the whole way and I tried to but almost instantly got sick. I ended up listening to my ipod and staring out the window most of the way.
The scenery is beautiful. Lots of mountains (most still with snow), little homes , several lakes, and it seemed like sheep and cows everywhere. I almost felt like I was driving through western Kansas - except I wasn't driving and there where mountains not the 'Flint Hills' (really, how are those considered hills anyway?)
When we got there we found our way to the subway (think NYC only with just 3 lines). When we descended the stairs we were instantly bombarded with people trying to sell you worthless crap and other people wanting to 'help' the Stupid Americans get to where they're going in exchange for Euros. We were looking at a map to figure out where we needed to go (although we pretty much already knew) and some guy came up to us and started talking to us -'Where are you going?'
'We got it, thanks.'
'No, where are you going?'
'Cadorna.'
'2 stops on green line, right there, 2 euros'
'Thanks, we don't have any money.'
'What?'
'We don't have any money.'
Random (I assume) swear word
Ok, now we (kinda) know where we are going. We need tickets. To the ticket machine. It doesn't take credit or debit cards. To the ticket guy. He doesn't take credit or debit cards. To the ATM. Back down the stairs. 'No thank you sir/madam we are not in need of your assistance/directions/crap you are selling for outrageous prices.' To the ticket machine. 'Insert a smaller bill.' Random (I'm sure) swear word from BOTH Kyle and I. BACK to the ticket guy. FINALLY buy our tickets. Get on the subway. Take it 5 stops to Cadorna. Up the stairs.
We're looking for the 1 tram to got to 'Arona'. We find the line, relatively painless. Now we need to figure out which way and when to get off. The north listing doesn't have an 'Arona' stop. The south listing doesn't have an 'Arona' stop. Ok. Good thing we have the phone number of the hotel. Come to find out the stop is 'Something Something Arona'. That would have been nice to know originally...
Ok, off the tram at 'Something Something Arona'. And...instantly lost again. Call the hotel back. Kyle says he's going to repeat the directions to me so that maybe between the two of us we can get there. Makes since to me...except the second the hotel answers the phone he starts walking off - over there, over here, back over there. Then he crosses the street and starts walking away. I figure now would be a good time to follow him. We walk about 2-3 blocks to the left when we are told to do a 180, walk back to where we started, then walk 2 more blocks, turn right and the hotel will be right there. AHHHH!!!
FINALLY (yes, again) about 2 hours later - no seriously, it was really 2 hours - we get to the hotel and get checked in. We're told the Castle and the Du'omo are both good places to go. The castle is closer so we decide to go there. On the way we found these (I like to take picture of things from home in other places).
We take the 1 tram back to Cadorna and walk the couple blocks to the Castle. When we get there we realize they are having some sort of Festivity. (Kyle had gotten the day off but we both totally forgot why.) Milano was celebrating their own Riot Day by having a parade with floats (Yeah, Old Settler's again!). Only this parade is an adult parade. All the floats are selling alcohol from the back, many have scantily clad women dancing provocatively, all of them had music blaring louder then a BVNW kid driving his daddy's beemer, and I think one even had a gay wedding happening.
**Music side note. 4 out of every 5 songs was in English both along the parade route and on Italian Mtv (Come one, it was either that or the BBC news - I pick trashy pop culture any day!). And Italians must only have like 15 songs because I saw this probably 15 times...So, we joined in the dance party for about half a block and didn't didn't have any drinks since I couldn't see them being made (Prego mom!). We walked around and looked at some more of the float, found the 'grunge/crazy mosh pit float', Kyle got tagged with spray paint and then I decided that I had had enough. The parade was over, the police were out in full force, and the only thing left to happen was loitering and lewd behavior.
Then we realized we were hungry (we hadn't eaten since about 8:30 and it was only a cinnamon roll from the HB at that). Well, what do you eat in Italy? PASTA!! We walked down the main street between the castle and the Du'omo and pretty much just picked the first place we found. OMG, the pasta was to-die-for! I had homemade spaghetti noddles with a tomato sauce and crab (and none of that imitation crab either!). It was the best thing I think I've ever had in my life!Now we're exhausted and all we want to do is go to sleep (I'm mean it IS like 7:30). So on the way back to the hotel we stop for the other thing you have to eat when in Italy, Gelato!
In bed, asleep, 9:30, end of day 1.
Day 2 - We set an alarm for 8 am. Why? I'm not so sure, but we did. We did 'sleep' for about 11 hours.
**Bed side note. Beds in Europe, yes - all of Europe - are absolutely worthless. They are hard and miserable. When traveling in Europe I suggest bringing your own bed with box springs. And don't forget the sheets and other linens because the one's here won't fit your bed. I will never leave home again without my 'I'm from America' pillow. (and my 'I'm a tourist' camera, and my 'Why is it still freaking raining?' umbrella and poncho, and my 'The commute to anywhere cool is really long' ipod, and my 'I have to pay for shopping bags?' reusable shopping bag, and of course my 'I have to put all this crap somewhere' purse/duffel bag.)
We got ready as fast as we cared to and then went down to our free breakfast buffet. It was very good. We had scrambled eggs with bacon. Toast with jam and nutella. Brie and ham, American decaf coffee, and orange, lemon, carrot juice. It was really quite a spread! Kyle ate some bio-cardboard one day (apparently it's all the rage here)...I thought it could have used some nutella.
We took the tram back down to the Castle where we started our day. (Kyle thought it needed a moat - I told him our castle could have one. This castle no longer had the threat of invasion and the upkeep of a moat probably isn't cheap). We didn't pay to go into the into the castle since the only thing on the inside were pretty lame museums.
I'll give you the rundown of the castle: don't wear heels - the cobblestone will kill your ankles; anything that looked like there was something dead in it - there was something dead in it; no, that isn't a historic, weathering limestone sculpture - that's a big rock with pigeon crap on it; and it's ok to suck face inside a 400 year old castle.Then we walked down the same street as the night before and ate at another sidewalk caffe (yes, they spell it like that. And, we didn't eat a lunch or dinner inside the whole time). Kyle had lasagna and I had a pesto pasta.
The Du'omo is a BEAUTIFUL basilica. It was free to get into and we spent the 4 Euros per person to get the audio tour (I wouldn't recommend it, I'll give you a rundown later). It has thousands of stained glass window panels and is six stories tall on the inside. It's shaped like a traditional European church - in the shape of a cross (there's some fancy name for it but that's what it means).
Rundown: The catholic church had too much money at the time and instead of do something productive with it like, say, help the poor they built a gi-normous church; the catholics were so powerful that they built canals to get the six story marble pillars from the quarry to the site and made it so the materials weren't subject to taxes; everyone was so excited about the church they fought over who could donated the biggest and best stuff; anything that looked like there was something dead in it - there was something dead in it; and it's ok to suck face inside a 400 year old church.Once back outside there was this mass of crazy, screaming teenagers with homemade signs. After some sleuthing, we determined that TRL Italy was filming. You know, Mtv's Total Request Live. 'I'm sorry little girl, but 'Avril Lavigne is NOT the best thing to happen EVER'. We get some more gelato and walk around the galleria a little bit and found an English book store where we found a travel book on Milano (better late then never right?) then headed back to the hotel. The guy at the front desk told us of a great place to have pizza so we went there for dinner (my pizza was not so cooked so it was not so great...) and then tried to go to the grocery store to check it out and get some more gelato but they were closed. So we didn't.
Again, In bed, asleep, 9:30, end of day 2.Day three. Same beginning as day 2, except no alarm. We just woke up about 8 on our own. Although, you would technically have to be asleep to wake up...right? Outside of the hotel was a huge street market. We walked around and looked at what was being sold but didn't find anything of any interest. Although it was interesting to see that anything you wanted could be bought at that market. The fish booth was next to the cheese booth was next to the designer knockoff clothing booth (there were a lot of those) next to the household cleaning supplies booth.
Since we were in Milano we had to go to the super high fashion, super high priced shopping area. And I was going to buy something damnit (it's not a bad word if there's no space). So, surprise!, I didn't...not a single thing for me. I looked and looked and looked and looked (even not at the price tags) and I couldn't find anything. Oh well... Kyle bought a book (I was going to buy the new Madonna cd but it was 20 Euros - which is $30. I'll suck it up and buy it on iTunes for $9.99 later) and we bought some gifts for some people but I was very surprised at how little we spent.I can't tell you exactly how far we walked but it was probably several km. About 5 pm we were done so we headed back to the hotel. After a short rest we got back at it and went to dinner back on the main drag (we determined that the food in the tourist-y part was better than the food in the non-tourist-y part, go figure!). After another pasta dinner we went to a gelato place that we had seen every time we took the train into the city from the hotel. OMG, best gelato EVER. It was so rich with flavor and smooth. When I go back to pick up my sister we are definitely going there!
Here's the view before dinner:
And after dinner:
Again, In bed, asleep, 11:30, end of day 3.Day 4. We slept in, mostly because we were so exhausted. We barely made it out of the room by the time they closed breakfast at 11. We checked out of the room and put our bags in the baggage room and we were off for the day. We were on a mission. We wanted to see the Brera district (think Moulin Rouge), we needed a 'squooshy magnet', and I needed some postcards to scrap book.
The Brera district was constructed during the Bohemian period (I don't actually know when that was...). It was very pretty but basically you just walk done the street and 'ohh' and 'ahh' until you've had enough and then you move on.
We did find a very nice, at one point, personal residence. We decided we're modeling our castle after it.**Future Castle side note. This is what we are modeling our castle after.
Ok, so it won't be just like this - it'll be a lot more modern with a lot less places for birds to sit on and do their business. But our house is going to be a house with a huge upstairs and downstairs porch stretching the entire length of the front of the house. There will be three large walls with covered walkways enclosing the garden/parking lot/basketball court. The front door into this area will be one of those HUGE European doors that are as tall as the building with a little bitty man door that you can't find unless it's open. This enclosed area will also have a clear retractable roof so that you can be 'outside' even in the winter and will be heated with either solar panels (my idea) or propane (Kyle's idea). Since this house is going to be about the coolest thing to ever hit Kansas my job will be to coordinate all of the events that want to be held in our house (of course there will be a industrial strength kitchen and full staff to man it).Please click here to contact us about your future event. Dates are filling up quickly. (Ok, that 'link' doesn't actually work - but wouldn't it be cool if it did?)
Oh, and don't forget the moat that goes all the way around the house stocked with sharks with lazer beams attached to their foreheads.
There is not a squooshy magnet to be had in all of Milano. So, I settled for a resin one (I'm going to need a lot of magnets to cover my industrial sized refrigerator). It's a picture of the castle and the fountain with "Milano" written across the bottom. It's not my ideal magnet but, you know, it fulfilled my requirements. I also bought three postcards that will go into the scrapbook eventually.
Alright, we are both thoroughly exhausted so we head back to the hotel (in case you haven't realized the hotel is like a 15 minute tram ride away from the hub of Milano), pick up our bags, and head back out to go to the train station. Luckily, I brought my pack mule with me since I knew I was going to be tired and I didn't want to carry my backpack. We didn't want to be late so we ended up getting to the train station about 45 minutes early. We just people watched and discussed life and what we want to get out of our travel adventures until it was time to get on the train.The train ride home was just like the train ride there; it was long and I couldn't read. (Next time I will remember to bring my game boy or some sudoku or something that isn't a book...) It was very nice to step back into the comfortably uncomfortable-ness of Zurich.
Now we're home, I've finished this post, and I have to get to unpacking the 120 boxes of stuff from the states that was delivered the day before we left.
Cheers!
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