Saturday we woke up early and went down to breakfast in the hostel. They had tasteless cereal, which I ate, and some rolls with nutella. The good part? They had one of those automatic coffee dispensers except instead of what we're used to it had Italian cappuccino and other delicious things. So of course, I started my day with two cappuccinos since I've felt a little caffeine deprived lately. We traveled to the amazing Duomo of Milan which is the most beautiful cathedral I've ever seen. We went inside for awhile and basked in the immense space and glow from the stained glass windows. Now for the fun part. We bought tickets to go on the roof of the Duomo, which only cost us 3 Euros. The climb wasn't bad but the stair radius was really small, and I was really dizzy by the time I reached the top. Once we reached the roof of the Duomo, we saw that not only the facades were intricately carved but the roof was as well. We walked through the scalloped flying buttresses and took lots of silly pictures. Then we reached another small stair that lead us to the very top. Up here, we could see Switzerland! Kinda. We could see the Swiss Alps clearly behind the city. Again, many more silly pictures we taken up here while we basked in the sun and the gloriousness that is Milan.
After the Duomo we went into the Galleria, but didn't stay here long because we were starving! A fun note, a McDonalds is across from Loius Vuitton in the Galleria. Pure Class. We found a little place away from the heart of the city (so we didn't have to pay and arm and leg) and everyone got Kabobs except me. They still just taste like greek gyros to me, which I'm not enthralled with, so I just had a simple panini instead. Also, my first Coke since I've been here. It was cold, fizzy, and glorious. After lunch, we were off to find the little castle down the way from the Duomo. After getting side tracked a few times by stores along the way, we reached the cute little castle. There wasn't really anything to do except walk straight through it and when we got through we found a surprise--a carnival! I don't know what the occasion was but some of us jumped into bumper cars to join in the festivities. In front of the carnival was a beautiful park with a white gateway arch at the end. After nice stroll through the park, we went back through the castle and to a little gelato place close by. Here I had- Limone and Mango! delicious, but not quite as good as the limone and fragola. I'm pretty sure all gelato that I eat will have limone in it somewhere.
Shopping was next on the list of things to do that day. First we went down the rich street where things are layed out in sweet displays and we can't even afford to breathe the air inside the shops. A lot of the expensive shops have like, bouncers standing at the door and it's really intimidating. Plus we get the feeling that here, if you look like crap you're not welcome; unlike in the US where a lot of really rich people dress crappily so the doors are open to basically everyone. We then moved to the street whose shopping was more in our price range and did some speed shopping before we had to catch a train back to the hostel. Everyone that my roomies and I were with had a soccer game to go to, so we walked with them to the stadium. We had hope to all eat together, but there was nothing around the stadium except for street vendors. After seeing them off, Kelsey, Cara and I went back into the city by the Duomo and did some more shopping at our own pace. We then found a restaurant in the area that wasn't too overpriced and had a nice sit down dinner. The Waiter kept asking if we were only doing the starter course of pasta, which of course we were since we're poor college students. While enjoying our meal of pasta and wine (which was our only real meal that weekend) we did a little people watching and made up life stories about the people next to us who seemed to be really important or rich. After a chill dinner, we headed back to the hostel for the night.
The next morning we woke up to cold rain. We had an early breakfast, checked out of the hostel, and went to the central train station to buy tickets to Varenna which is one of the towns on Lake Como. We reached Varenna and found an ethereal landscape with high mountains, the lake and brightly painted towns all around. Once there, we caught a ferry to Bellagio, which is the most famous of the little towns. Unfortunately, our pictures didn't turn out so well since it was so foggy and rainy, and nothing was in season so all the trees were pruned back and gardens a bit sparse. We strolled down one of the little shopping loggias, looking at the local silk products. When we found a nice looking point over the lake, the boys cracked open a bottle of cheap street vendor wine and we had a toast in plastic cups. Very classy if you ask me. The other bottle of wine was finished on the ferry ride back to Varenna.
Here's the nerve wrecking part of the day. We booked our tickets from Milan to Arezzo at 7:45 since it was the last train before an overnight one which would have put us in Arezzo at 5:30 am. We were supposed to get into the Milan station from Varenna at 7:40. A 5 minute connection time. Our train to Milan was 3 minutes late = 2 minutes to get off our train, find the new one, validate, and get on. We made our way to the first car as the train was pulling into the station and as soon as the doors opened, we were off like greyhounds on a race track. I don't think I've even run that fast even through the Atlanta airport. I managed to be one of the first to find the train and got on as the conductor blew the whistle. We had everyone there except for 2 or 3. Cara kept saying "due mas due mas!" (two more) to the conductor. Lucky for us, the guy that was getting on before me had 5 suitcases to load which bought us an extra minute to get on the train. Adrenaline rush to the max. We finished our 5 hour train to Arezzo and then had a 30 minute wait for the train to Castiglion F.no.
We always seem to think we're out of the water when we get back to Castig. What we forget is the 20 minute hike up the hill. Since we only had a meager breakfast and crappy but expensive lunch, we dropped our stuff off at the study center and headed to pirate bar for some pizza to wrap up the evening. I ate a whole one. That, my friends, is a successful end to an adventure.
I realize this post and the one before were really long and probably only my parents are still reading. If you're not my parents and read this whole thing, you must be really bored right now and hopefully this post brought you a little bit of entertainment.
Now...Off to Roma in only 7 hours and I need to finish packing... Ciao!
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