Italy Day 2, Milan
The next morning, we woke up early and had a good breakfast on the top floor of the hotel and then parted ways for the morning. Glor and Dan had a specific location to visit on request of their son and then they went to La Scala, the opera house. Christian and I went to the castle instead. The castle had a museum of prehistoric findings in the Milan area that was surprisingly informative despite its small size, and on top of that, they had a tiny Egyptian museum that was stocked to the brim with mummies, sarcophagi and other relics. Really impressive and much more than we expected.
We were actually quite happy with Milan, which we weren't expecting. People (Italians, specifically a Napolitano) had told us there wasn't much to see beyond the Duomo and the castle. And that may be true, but it was still something nice to see. We were also surprised that the city, a fashion capital of the world, wasn't more pretentious. Four years ago, we had attributed our experience in Verona to Milanese culture, where people fiercely critiqued our clothes by looking us up and down with their eyes and giving disapproving looks. But this hardly happened in Milan. Maybe we have better clothes this time, but more likely it's that the Milanese are more used to tourists or just don't care as much about fashion on others as we'd expected. I don't know if I'd come back here again, but it was worth visiting.
At midday, we checked out of our hotel and went to the train station. We wanted to buy tickets to Genoa, so we went to a ticket machine, entered in all the info, selected seats, put in a credit card and the machine couldn't read it. We tried American cards and European ones, but none of them worked and the machine cancelled our request. So we went to the area with actual people operating the registers. There were different color machines there, so Glor and Dan stood in line while Christian and I tried our luck with these new machines. Again, we enter all the info, select seats and just as we're about to purchase, the machine informs us that "the printer is not ready" and cancels the reservation. Unbelievable. We try the machine next to it and finally succeeded, but seriously, almost every machine either said it was out of order or didn't say so until you had wasted time trying to buy tickets with it. That's Italy for you.
The train to Genoa didn't have air conditioning until it pulled away from the station, so we got all sweaty. But then we had a very pleasant trip, finishing up our French bread, cheese and fruit from earlier. We arrived in Genoa without any trouble in the mid-afternoon.
We were actually quite happy with Milan, which we weren't expecting. People (Italians, specifically a Napolitano) had told us there wasn't much to see beyond the Duomo and the castle. And that may be true, but it was still something nice to see. We were also surprised that the city, a fashion capital of the world, wasn't more pretentious. Four years ago, we had attributed our experience in Verona to Milanese culture, where people fiercely critiqued our clothes by looking us up and down with their eyes and giving disapproving looks. But this hardly happened in Milan. Maybe we have better clothes this time, but more likely it's that the Milanese are more used to tourists or just don't care as much about fashion on others as we'd expected. I don't know if I'd come back here again, but it was worth visiting.
At midday, we checked out of our hotel and went to the train station. We wanted to buy tickets to Genoa, so we went to a ticket machine, entered in all the info, selected seats, put in a credit card and the machine couldn't read it. We tried American cards and European ones, but none of them worked and the machine cancelled our request. So we went to the area with actual people operating the registers. There were different color machines there, so Glor and Dan stood in line while Christian and I tried our luck with these new machines. Again, we enter all the info, select seats and just as we're about to purchase, the machine informs us that "the printer is not ready" and cancels the reservation. Unbelievable. We try the machine next to it and finally succeeded, but seriously, almost every machine either said it was out of order or didn't say so until you had wasted time trying to buy tickets with it. That's Italy for you.
The train to Genoa didn't have air conditioning until it pulled away from the station, so we got all sweaty. But then we had a very pleasant trip, finishing up our French bread, cheese and fruit from earlier. We arrived in Genoa without any trouble in the mid-afternoon.