The first sign of trouble came the evening before when we arrived at our hotel and found out that 'Internet available' meant at a 7 Euro surcharge. Our mistake. As we were only staying for a single night it didn't seem like too big a deal. We sucked it up and forked over the money.
The next morning, we were enjoying a leisurely complimentary breakfast. We decided we would linger and have a second cup of coffee only to find the coffeemaker had broken. We left the hotel with our bags and went back to the train station to lock them up for a few hours and explore a bit of the city before moving on to Bologna. After 10 minutes of scouring the huge station we realized that there were no lockers, only a baggage service. We could pay 5 Euro per bag for a bunch of guys to stack them behind a counter instead of the 3-4 Euro (the standard price in other train station across Europe...we would know) to lock up our two backpacks, laptop case, and smaller rolling bag. Frustrated, we handed over the backpacks, rolling bag, and another 15 Euro. Jackie toted the laptop around for the rest of the morning. Milan was becoming an expensive city.
Next, we went to the ticket center to book a reservation on the train that afternoon. The lineup was a little long but we waited it out. The attendant got us our reservation but as we were walking away we realized that he had booked us in second class when our Rail Europe passes are for first (people aged 26+ can only purchase 1st class Rail Passes and Jackie is an old gal). We brought it back up to him and he corrected it right away which was nice (although we later noticed a second problem...more to come on that).
Before leaving the train station we went to the post office hoping to buy some stamps for postcards. When our number was called we went up and explained that we wanted stamps for outside of Europe, but the attendant's response was 'tomorrow'. This was a little confusing at first and it took a few more hand gestures and scattered English words to realize that the office was out of stamps and we would need to come back tomorrow when they would presumably have more. Stamps would have to wait until Bologna.
We left the train station and headed into the underground. We had no problems navigating our way to the Duomo, Milano's cathedral (Thank God!).
Construction on the Duomo was started in 1386 and took nearly six centuries to complete. In 1965 the final architectural elements were finished though some intended statues still have not been carved to date. Ironically, some statues have been so worn down by weather that they have already been replaced in recent restoration work. The Cathedral is the fourth largest in the world and the largest cathedral in Italy. It truly was immense.
*Front facade
After walking around the interior for a while we decided that we would pay to take the stairs to the roof. The cathedral has amazing gothic architecture and it was really quite impressive to see it up close. I'm sure that some of the religious symbolism was lost on us.
As you may be able to tell from the photos, the weather was starting to look threatening so we got off the roof and back onto the piazza in front of the Duomo. It began to rain lightly which we didn't mind as we walked around. Then the skies opened up forcing us into the closest cafe. Much to our chagrin it was a McCafe, also known as a fancy coffeehouse version of McDonald's (interesting side note: Milano had the highest concentration of McDonalds we have seen in a European city). We ordered coffees, which I am ashamed to say were not bad, and we waited out the rain.
When things dried up a bit we went out again, grabbed some food for a late lunch on the train, bought a packet of roasted chestnuts, then made our way back to the train station. When we boarded our train we learned that the tickets we were sold were not collocated. Jackie and I both had window seats in the same row but on opposite sides of the train. Fortunately nobody ended up sitting opposite Jack so once we pulled out from the station we sat together and ate.
We arrived in Bologna on schedule and found our hotel with no problems. Neither of us were too hungry so we stayed in for the evening and made due with the food we had on hand. Tomorrow we are getting picked up at 7:30 from our hotel to spend the day touring around the countryside visiting cheese factories, balsamic vinegar producing villas, and a prosciutto curing plant. The tour is very highly rated and we are both looking forward to it. Ciao!
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