Friday + {Day Eighteen: Milan}

Since Sarah and Shannon wanted to see Venice, they took an early train to the city for the day. Gooligan and I considered taking a day trip ourselves. Richard had some tempting suggestions. But we decided to just walk around the city and see the sights.

Richard gave us a lot of amazing pointers. We ate at this bakery, then went and saw the castle--beautiful, but not as castle-y as we expected. Then we went to the aquarium. Then more walking and a fiasco where we couldn't figure out where to eat lunch. We eventually chose this place with a HUGE line. Food was fabulous! Stuffed pastries with ricotta and spinach.

After lunch we went back to the Duomo and sat in the pews and had a wonderful, long conversation.

Then since I absolutely had to get gelato we did! So good.

When we got back to Richard's, he was making a painting for his boyfriend. We sat and talked to him, had some wine, and helped him peel some vegetables for dinner. His boyfriend arrived just before dinner and we had a lovely chat with them. Several of their friends (mostly neighbors in the complex) stopped in and soon there was a great lively dinner party going on!

Unfortunately Shannon and Sarah's train was delayed coming back from Venice, so they were quite late to the party (literally), but they didn't miss all the festivities. A bunch more wine later, and we stopped in at another neighbor's for awhile, before we all headed home around two in the morning.

Not necessarily a lot to see in Milan, but the people we met were amazing, warm, and friendly, so I'm glad that we started our trip to Italy off on the right note.

Thursday + {Day Seventeen: Milan}

I fell down the stairs today. I'm okay, miraculously, but I fell down half a flight of our ubertiny staircase in Barcelona. The sum total of my damage: I scraped a lot of the skin off my pinky finger.

Our taxi driver was grouchy that we were late (he was actually early) and then he blasted Whitesnake's "Slip of the Tongue" the entire trip to the airport. It probably would've been cheaper to actually go to a Whitesnake concert.

Anyway, fifty euros later, we arrived at our airport with plenty of time to catch our last flight of the trip. From here on out, it's all trains! We took Easyjet this time instead of Ryanair. Much, much better.

From the airport in Milan we took a shuttle bus to the train station where we caught a taxi to our host's house. 

Our host, Richard, was waiting for us outside his place. Richard was lovely and welcoming from the very first moment we arrived. He immediately verbally walked us through the city, the good places to eat, the major sights, etc.

While I am (especially in retrospect) so grateful for Richard's advice, at the moment, I was in considerable amounts of pain from my sunburn, which I hadn't had time to treat and had been rubbed at by my luggage/shirt all day. By the time we got to Richard's my skin was on fire.

But after I got the change to treat my skin, I felt a million times better so although we were tired, the four of us hit the street immediately after dumping our luggage off. We ate at this delicious mini pizza restaurant called Mipi. Definitely the highlight of the day. Then Sarah really wanted to see the original Prada store, so we did. We also went into the Duomo--this amazingly huge Gothic cathedral.

Then we made our way to the Brera District, where Richard had told us to eat at a happy hour. After buying a drink for six or eight euros, we got to eat for free at this huge, delicious buffet.

We were also seranaded by a lovely guitar player. Then we made our way back home, where we slept soundly.