Milano e Venezia con Mama!

It has been an exciting week! I started it off by visiting my friend Eliana and her new family at the hospital. As I mentioned Pietro was born on Friday, June 12 and I was able to see him on Monday. He is such a little peanut with a full head of hair. I am excited to get to know him in my remaining time here!

Saturday I took the train to Milano to meet my mom and our family friend Mrs. Kroll. I walked around and saw some of the old churches in the city.

San Ambrogio

San Lorenzo (these columns date back to the 4th century)

The ladies flew into Roma on Tuesday, spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Roma, took a bus to Siena for the day on Thursday and continued on to Florence, Friday they had a day trip to Cinque Terre, and Saturday they explored Florence, saw fake David and met me in Milano. It was so nice to see them get off the train! We walked around the duomo a bit Saturday evening before having dinner. We went the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele and were treated to a fashion show.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuale

Milan Fashion show

Sunday we woke up and went to mass at the Duomo and after we went up to the roof and saw great views of the city and the Alps in the distance. I really can't get enough of them! We explored Milano and even found our way to a castle.

Looking up at the duomo

The lovely ladies atop the duomo

The view from atop the duomo

Gothic architecture up close

Castle Sforzesco

We took the metro all over the city and the girls kept mentioning how nice it was to have me around (I am not so sure Tuesday at 3:00 AM they were thinking the same thing...read on for more). Milano is a confusing city as the streets are not very gridlike so it is a bit difficult to get around.

In the early evening we took a train to Venice. We found our hotel (of course up down and around stairs) and set out to have dinner. Venice is such a unique city with the waterways winding all through the streets. The public transportation and taxis are all boats!

Vaporetto (a.k.a. city bus)

Taking the vaporetto to our hotel

Houses and a side "street" of the grand canal

After dinner we sat outside a church and listened to a concert of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. We were too late to get into the concert itself so we settled for sitting outside under the window. Mrs. Kroll asked me to climb up to see what was going on and as I sat hanging from the window I was able to see the five musicians playing their strings (sorry the picture of this spectacle is on my mom's camera...but you can picture it...window sill is about ten feet off the ground...I'm hanging on to the metal bars on the window hoping my feet stop sliding off the incline I pulled myself up by a pipe on).

Third window sill from the left is the one I was hanging from

It was a pretty cool way to spend the evening listening to amazing music in a piazza in Venice. Afterwards we walked to St. Mark's Square which is the largest piazza in the city...it was flooded! People were walking around in the water which was about six inches high and shop owners had wooden pirate "planks" to get into their stores.

Flooded St. Mark's Square

Monday morning we walked back to St. Mark's and the tide had gone down. The church is amazing and so different then what you can see at night.

St. Mark's

Clock Tower in St. Mark's Square

The domes of St. Mark's

Gondole station

Gandola in action

We took the water taxi (we bought 24 hour passes and had to make the most out of them...Milano 24 hour pass 3 euro...Venice 24 hour pass 18 euro) from St. Mark's back to the train station and walked our way back down around and through the streets of Venice to the Rialto Bridge (which is sort of like Ponte Vecchio in Florence with shops all along it) where we saw many amazing shops with the glass Venice is famous for!

Trust me ladies this "street" is on the map!

San Giovanni

Rialto Bridge

Shops along the Rialto Bridge

Dad don't worry they have hot dogs in Italia!

We purchased some sandwiches for the train, picked up our luggage from the hotel and headed to the train station. We were about an hour early so the girls sat outside while I did some last minute shopping. We went in at about 18:30 for our train at 19:02. I went inside to look on the board and of course no trains to Torino. I asked at the desk and she said it left out of the other train station...of course I should have looked at the ticket or read more closely the email my mom's friend sent me. We purchased tickets to the train (it was the next stop) and hopped on a train that left at 18:48 and would get us there perfectly in time to catch the train. Main problem...the train didn't leave. The conductor got on to say it was broke. OK...we hoofed it over to the next train (please picture me running in flip flops...which fell off...with two rollaway carry on suit cases and a backpack with two ladies trailing behind me) and it got to the station at 19:06...train had departed. Of course the train we needed to be late wasn't (both trains my mom and Mrs. Kroll had taken in Italy were 20 minutes delayed)! I took our tickets and waited in line at the ticket stand to exchange them...only problem is Betsy (my mom's friend) had booked them through her travel agency and the man told me I would have to return to the station that issued them to exchange them. That station happened to be in France. I purchased three new tickets to Torino via Milano. The train pulls up and we are in standing in front of car two...our tickets are for car ten. I begin running to the end of the train as it is so much easier to run on the platform then cart your luggage through the train. As I'm running the train is getting to leave. I hope on car eight and see my mom and Mrs. Kroll at about car four leisurely strolling towards me. Sensing they don't understand that the train will leave without them I yell for them to get on the train and luckily they do! The train ride to Milano was fine except that we had to move to car ten from car nine (which was pretty empty so we decided to just park it there) as something was "broken" in car nine and there was a mention of the polizia. In Milano our train was supposed to depart at 00:15 (and contrary to what my mom thinks this does not mean IN fifteen minutes it means fifteen minutes after midnight) but of course it was delayed 20 minutes as we had to wait for a train from Napoli to arrive. Then about 20 km out side of Torino we stopped and were treated to wonderful fumes of what smelled like burning brakes. I am really not sure what happened but we stopped there for about 30 minutes and ended up in Torino at 3:30 AM. Traveling with me is always an adventure!