MILANO

Originally, we were planning spend 3 nights in Florence and 3 nights in Milan, but after having several people wrinkle their noses when we said we were visiting the great fashion capital, and hearing glowing reports of Florence from all sides (except from a couple of guys who told us that they hated the city but had a fabulous time there and insisted that this made total sense), we changed our plans. I know, I know, how amazingly spontaneous of us.

So we only spent 2 nights in Milan, ie one full day. Our hostel was a bit out in the sticks (stix?) as choice is quite limited and relatively expensive in Milan. We emerged from the Metro station on Sunday evening and were just looking around for some street signs when a guy came up to us and said "are you looking for the hostel?" I guess that's what happens when you stand by a station wearing 20kg backpacks, desperately peering around and generally looking exhausted. The guy turned out to be also staying at our hostel, and had apparently spent hours trying to find the hostel that morning, so we were fairly grateful for his guidance.

We spent that evening at the hostel watching Titanic in Italian and eating surprisingly good supermarket microwaveables and salad out of the bag, until one of the reception guys came up to us and said 'you can't eat salad like that' and although I answered fairly childishly 'um, pretty sure I already am', he went off and came back with plates, cutlery, olive oil, salt and pepper. We were initially quite grateful if a little creeped out (no one else seemed to be getting the same treatment). However, when we asked him what we should do with them, he told us to wash them and give them back to him. After some confusion as to where we were supposed to do this (there was no kitchen accessible to us), we discovered that he meant us to do this in the bathroom, using hand soap and paper towels. I found this quite hilarious but Lucy was distressed, and at various points over the next couple of days kept bursting out "I can't believe we ate off handwash plates!!"

The next day we headed into town for some touristy times. First we tried to enter the cathedral, but were told that our skirts were too short. Then we went to the tourist information centre, where an extremely unhelpful woman told gave us a map, told us that there were no English movies on til October, and also that the Last Supper was held in a museum that is closed on Mondays and you have to book an appointment to see it 2-3 months in advance. How were we supposed to know that? However, as well as managing to make us feel like complete morons she did tell us where to go to use the internet, so we went and looked up some stuff included cinemas that show movies in VO.

We had a look at the map that she gave us had lots of information, including all the museums and their opening hours. This is when we found out that just about every museum in Milan is closed on Mondays. It was quite hilarious. Well done us. Eventually we found some castle, and had a look round there, and sat in the gardens eating our lunch pilfered from the free hostel breakfast (take that, handwash weirdo). Then we went and checked out the shops (obviously a must-do in Milan). We wandered round in a department store pretending we could afford Jimmy Choos and Dior key chains. At one point we accidently witnessed a shop assistant flagrantly checking himself out in the mirror - he got really embarrassed, offered us some perfume and sprayed it all over my hand.

We bought some tights so we could go to the cathedral. It was so worth it; it is gorgeous. Afterwards we climbed up to the Duomo, which was very different from Florence and Rome, and involved wandering around the beautiful rooftop taking endless pictures of the architechture and Jesus, obvs.

We had been craving going to the movies for a while, and had decided that it would be a good activity for our last night together (we didn't think the Milan nightlife would have many Monday offerings). After striking out a couple of times, we found a cinema that was showing Pelham 123 in VO - not our first choice, but it would do. We came back at 8, but after sitting through the ads, the film was, of course, in Italian. The woman had given us the wrong time. It was LAME LAME LAME and very disappointing for our last evening. We got our money back and just headed back to the hostel.

The next morning we got up early and headed back to the train station where I boarded the train for Montpellier take 2 and Lucy headed for Zurich. It was the first time in 66 days that we had been apart for more than a few hours. I don't know about Lu, but I had a long and boring train day accompanied by much nervous stuttering when anyone spoke to me in French or Italian. The grief is starting to wear off, and I will see her in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks, so await the blog entry with bated breath!

Thanks for reading guys, sorry for the inconsistency of our posting and for boring you with endless details of our travels!