Catch-up post: Milan

Sorry to all of those who have following, but we havent been keeping up to date lately. We didnt have easy accessible internet while in Milan or Venice, and we only spent a few days in each city.

So here is an abstract of our time in Milan. We arrived by plane from Barcelona - a much better experience this time around. After a bus ride into town, we had to find a map of the city. We probably walked around the train station for an hour looking for an info desk before finding a map. Once we did, we walked across half the city to our hotel. It actually was a decent place. The guys who ran the front desk basically sat around smoking ciggarettes, playing online poker or Half Life. But they were really friendly and helpful. By the way, after 7 nights in noisy Barcelona, I finally got a full nights sleep!

Our first full day we walked into the city center to check out the gorgeous Milan Cathedral. Did you know it's the 3rd largest church in Europe? Well now you know. After leaving the cathedral, we were tricked into “donating” a Euro for these little rainbow colored bracelets that a street merchant insisted we wear. We tried to get out of it, but he was just so friendly. Oh well. Then we found or way out to Sforza castle, a rebuilt fortress where the original medieval entrance was. Finally we thought we could catch a glimpse of Davinci's Last Supper, but apparently you have to prebook your ticket, and spots are filled up until May! So much for that. We rounded out the night checking out a bar near our hotel. We had a couple of beers and ate some great free happy hour food. The owner was a fun, eccentric guy who played some old 45s of Salsa and Latin jazz, old Willy Nelson, and 60's American pop.

Our second day we decided to check out Milan's “little Venice” neighborhood. It was supposed to have nice footbridges over little canals...it was NOT worth the stop. Sure the all the buildings are beautiful, and all that, but a little Venice it's not. So by the time we made it back to our hotel (by walking), we were famished. That night, We went out around our hotel looking for some cheap eats once more. We ended up finding this Kebab place that sold pizza. We ordered this promotional combo which included a slice of pizza (we thought), fries and a can of Coke for 6 Euros (a great deal!). We ended up getting a full pizza, fries, and a coke. We thought the cook made a mistake, so we high tailed it out of there before they noticed. It wasn't that great of a pizza, but for 6 Euros I enjoyed it like it was.

The next morning we went back to the train station and headed east to Venice. More on that soon and pics of Milan and Venice will be up shortly.