LOCATION: Hotel in a Milan, Italy suburb
WEATHER: Very pleasant. Highs about 70
We got up quite early at our housesitting assignment in Scotland, said goodbye, and hit the road for the Edinburgh airport. We were in the midst of morning rush hour traffic so it was slow going, especially across the Forth Bridge right outside of Edinburgh.
I was my usual frantic self, afraid that we would not get there in time for the departure. It was good that we did have ample time, due to the slow traffic, and then not being able to find the car return place. We ended up in the short-term parking garage and had to pay to get out of it!!!! Finally found the Hertz place. Then, our kiosk would not print our boarding passes, so we had to queue up to talk with someone. That solved, we went through a very scrutinizing security process. They took my finger nail file which has gone successfully through security screening all over the world. Then, they confiscated the two jars of pate that John had given us last night! I was heartbroken. Nothing to do.
Our first short flight took us to Manchester. We used our last British Pounds to buy a sandwich for the next leg. The flight to Milan was 2 hours. We flew on Flybe. Tiny airplanes. Cheap.
We flew over the Swiss Alps. Beautiful! I had forgotten how north Milan is. As soon as the Alps were behind us, we started our descent.
Our hotel is in a suburb as there is a big convention or something filling up all the hotels in Milan this week. The airport is quite a bit out of town, and the hotel is even farther, the other way. I was not about to pay for an expensive taxi. I had been doing a bit of internet research on how to get to the hotel. I was not certain, but thought I had figured it out.
It was a little tricky. There are 2 Milan airports (unfortunately ours is the one 25 miles away from city center) and 2 downtown train stations, with different locations and trains. We first took a train toward the center of Milan, stopping one stop before downtown. There, we tried to pick up another train to our suburb, Desio. I couldn't figure out which train to take. We asked one passenger and he gave us wrong information. We went running to the platform, only to find out it wasn't going toward Desio. I asked someone official looking who pointed us to another platform. Safely on the train, we breathed a sigh of relief. It was evening rush hour and the train was packed. We had to stand up in the area by the door. Then, in my poor Italian, I started reading a notice on the door. I finally figured out that it was saying that the train was longer than some of the station platforms, including Desio's, so passengers stopping there had to be in certain train cars. I thought we were ok, but not sure. We traveled on and on. We stopped in Monza, home of the big Italian car race, but continued on. My ticket said something about Monza, which made me nervous thinking that perhaps we were supposed to transfer there. I asked a fellow passenger and she kindly told me that Desio was "proximo". Sure enough, we hopped off next at Desio. The entire trip took about 2.5 hours! But we didn't pay for a taxi :-) We easily found our hotel next to the station.
With a one-hour time zone difference, it was soon time for dinner. We spied a pizzeria/restaurante nearby and checked it out. It seemed very cute. We ordered their house wine which tasted disappointedly like a frizzy Lambrusco, and a pizza. The waiter asked us several times if that is all we wanted. We watched other diners go through several courses....a salad course followed by pasta, then a main course, then dessert. We felt a little guilty so ordered a dessert, a flaming crime brûlée type of thing.
We asked if they sold wine by the bottle, as we really liked everything about the restaurant except the wine. He showed a wine list to us so we will probably go back there, since we are staying here 3 nights.
Back in the room, we flipped through awful Italian TV programs, then went to bed.
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