We just returned from a fantastic two week trip to Italy. I'll be posting the photos one city at a time beginning with Milan.
We've been planning and saving for this trip for four years. It got interrupted by cancer in 2013, although Carol wasn't quite ready to go that year anyway. But once cancer was in the rear view mirror we started planning in earnest for a 2015 trip.
We gave the girls the choice of where they'd like to go. They chose Italy. Charlotte wanted to see Pompeii, Audrey wanted to see Rome and both girls wanted to see Venice.
Carol and I went to Italy for our honeymoon a month before our wedding in 2001. We got married in June, but we decided to go to Italy in late April/early May because we wanted cooler weather and smaller crowds. We chose the same time period this time. We combined the girls' spring break with another week of missed school. We figured they were going to get plenty of education that week.
We found surprisingly inexpensive airfare for non-stop flights between JFK and Milan. We drove to New York to catch our flight on Friday afternoon after school. We departed JFK at 10pm and arrived in Milan just after noon on Saturday Milan time.
Carol and I had warned the girls that we wouldn't feel very energetic when we arrived, and that we would strive to stay awake until a normal bedtime local time. However, we all felt pretty good upon arrival even though Audrey and Carol didn't sleep at all on the plane, I slept maybe two hours and Charlotte slept about three. We took the train into the city and found our way to our Airbnb apartment a few blocks from the train station.
The apartment was lovely. Our hosts Arianna and her husband had constructed a completely separate studio apartment from a portion of their large apartment and they rent it out regularly. It was quite comfortable and had a kitchen and four beds. The building had a charming post-war elevator that could barely accommodate the four of us if we squeezed.
We rested for a brief period and then we set out to see a little of Milan. We navigated to a tram stop and took the vintage tram to the Duomo. After visiting the church we walked around a bit looking for a reasonably-priced restaurant. We didn't find one and the girls were fading a bit, so we took the subway back to our apartment. We had seen a couple of promising restaurants on our block.
The restaurant door was unlocked but no one was around. We had to call out and eventually the owners came out of the back. We were pretty early for dinner by Italian standards (I think it was 7pm) but they were willing to serve us. They didn't speak much English, but I took the owner/waiter outside and pointed at the fixed price menu that looked good to us. It was easy to ask for ravioli for Audrey and spaghetti for Charlotte.
The fixed price menu for two people turned out to be way too much food for Carol and me. It started with antipasti from a buffet that the owner chose for us. He brought a large plate of cured meats and grilled marinated vegetables. After that he brought us each a very large serving of pasta. Just the pasta would have been more than I could eat. I didn't finish it. Then he brought us the secondi course - a large steak for me and something similar to chicken marsala for Carol. I barely touched my steak I was so full. We took leftovers back to the apartment refrigerator. We ended with a single tiramisu, split four ways, that was pudding-like and delicious.
Carol and the girls slept well. I woke up at 4:30 and was awake for hours. I think I fell asleep again around 7 and next thing I knew Carol was shaking me awake at 10:30. We had a noon train to Venice to catch, so we had to scramble a bit to eat some breakfast, pack and make our way back to the train station.
We deliberately didn't spend much time in Milan because other cities were a higher priority for us. Someday perhaps we'll spend more time there. It seems like the city has a lot to offer. If we had planned ahead, we might have been able to see The Last Supper.
You'll notice that I'm using a new photo hosting site: Smugmug. I've used Picasa Web Albums (A Google product) for many years but it is no longer maintained and looks pretty dated these days. Smugmug has a much more modern design and also works much better on phones. Click on the image above to go to the Milan photo gallery. On the upper right of that page you'll see a "Slideshow" button if you prefer to look at photos that way.
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