We made one final connection, picking up an Italian train in Lugano. This was the shortest leg of our journey, depositing us in Milan around 3 pm.
For this trip we had no specific plans at all- so we walked up to the tourist information booth at the train station and asked about what we should do. The woman there suggested we see the cathedral (the Domo) downtown. So, we hopped on a subway and headed that direction. Milan was HOT and when we emerged from the subway steps the heat was really almost too much. Usually we don't actually go into any of the churches we see, but just admire the architecture from the outside. This time, however, we did go in. We didn't take any pictures inside, but it was very impressive. The space was just massive and it was so very cool, especially compared with the heat of the square outside.
After leaving the church we just headed off in a random direction. Our general plan was to walk around and see the city, have some dinner and then hop on our train back to Frankfurt. The streets were very pretty. Unlike Amsterdam, where there were bicycles everywhere, here there were scooters all over the place. We saw lots of business people and many tourists.
We randomly happened to stumble on an old palace, I think the Milan Castle. It had clearly been surrounded by a moat and major parts of it have been destroyed and rebuilt over the years. We wandered around its grounds for a while before heading out towards the train station. On our way back we had a hard time finding any restaurants that were open- I guess it was a little early for Italians (around 6-6:30). We did find a bar that serves food and so we had a quick bite there. It wasn't the pasta and risotto that we had in mind, but it was good.
The biggest excitement of the trip, however, was our train ride home. We took the night train, leaving Milan at 9:10 and arriving in Frankfurt this morning just before 6. We reserved a coucette car with 6 bunks. We were not sure if we would have the compartment to ourselves or it we would be sharing it with strangers. We did end up with two bunkmates, Sean and Brendan, two very nice brothers from Northern California. They had just finished a 5 week backpacking trek all over Europe and were taking the train to Frankfurt to catch their flight home. Our boys took the middle bunks, the California boys were on the top bunks and Steve and I had the bottom ones. It was a little tight, but once we got started and I fell asleep I didn't rouse again until the conductor knocked on our door to tell us were just outside Frankfurt. We were back in our apartment by 6:30, and we were all back in bed by 7 or so! After a few hours rest, we are all a bit more refreshed.
I CANNOT believe you took the train to Italy! Steve and I took a train to Milan too... we had to ride in the space between two cars - standing under the armpits of a bunch of Texans and being thrown all about - into stinky arms and narrowly missing BIG blonde hair dos.
ReplyDelete