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Italia 1998

Prego is not just a spaghetti sauce!

Jvi
2004-09-14 11:16:14

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we wanted to reserve our seat. You will find that the train ticket agents to be a bit on the unfriendly side. They don’t go that extra mile, or even a few meters either.

We had reserved a hotel near the Statione Centrale in Milano so we could catch the first bus in the morning to Linate. Most flights now leave from Malpensa but both of the buses stop at the same place, just south of the station. We stayed at the Hotel Sopergo, two blocks away. It was clean, with good showers. We paid about $100 US for the night.

After checking in the hotel, we walked back to the station and just in front of the station are the stairs to the metro. We bought some tickets and took the #3 Metro to the piazza in front of the Duomo. Quite an impressive church, very ornate and very crowded. We walked across the street to the Victor Emmanuel Arcade. We looked for the bull in the pavement so we could do a twirl on his testicles but couldn’t find him. Walked around and saw some very expensive shops, out of my price range. Finally, we saw an attempted Gypsy scam. There were two oriental men walking in front of me when two young girls went up to one and pushed a paper up to his face. He jumped back and I walked into him. He started yelling and the girls disappeared. Christine saw it coming, I didn’t. It made us a little more aware so we stopped at a bar for a drink. It was crowded with people after work so we stood and had a couple glasses of red wine and some snacks. They had quite a lot of food, it was wonderful. It was a friendly place. We had to pay at a cashier and then go to the bar to get a drink. We walked some more and then found a metro station so we took it back to the train station. Later, near our hotel we found another bar and we sat down for a drink. First they brought our drinks and then he brought over a plate with bread slices topped with mayonnaise, lunch meat, lemon and olive oil. This was almost enough for dinner. As I mentioned before, when you sit down you pay more but they give you snacks.

We found a restaurant nearby for dinner, a real local place. We were eating early and later the place started to fill up. You could tell they were expecting a large crowd later, they had a table set for 12 for a birthday party starting at 10 PM. During our meal we struck up a conversation with two Americans who were staying in Switzerland and had come down for the day. Later, two tables filled up with nine men who all put their cell phones on the table. It was so funny, they all made and received calls while they sat there. We were laughing about it with the Americans. They too had seen a lot of people on cell phones in Italy.

The next day we got up early, breakfast was included in our room price but it didn’t start until 7 AM and we had to catch the bus at 6 AM. We walked the 2 blocks to the Central Train Station and waited for the bus to Linate Airport. The bus arrived on time. On this bus, the driver collects your fare, 4,500 lira. We had coffee at the airport and then looked for a place to sit where no one was smoking. People totally disregard No Smoking signs in Italy. We did have one nice experience on the train from Empoli to Siena. In error, we sat down on a smoking car but everyone who smoked got up and went out to the vestibule to smoke even though they were sitting in a smoking car and the vestibule was no smoking, you figure? What a joke.

A long flight home through Madrid on Iberia Airline.

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