We arrived in Milan at night and made our way from the train station to the hostel using the Metro. We mastered the Metro with ease, even if we had to ask for help the first time. Luckily, we both bought memberships to an International Hosteling group, so we were able to stay at this place. We met a crazy french-canadian named Hugo (pronounced Ugo). He is working in a hostel up in the Alps in France, so Ginny and I really want to go to now. The hostel is situated between to mountains where most people go skiing, but we can only afford to go snowshoeing. But shoeshoeing in the Alps seems like a great way to end our trip. So if our schedule works out, we are definitly going. Oops, i kinda got sidetracked. Right, Milan...
Went to the Duomo which was pretty insane. After seeing some many cathedrals in Paris, i thought i had seen them all. But i was terribly mistaken. The Duomo in Milan is so huge and ornate that it almost seems like too much. You can only stand there and think about the work that went into building it. Apparently, it took over 500 years to complete.
We went to go see the Last Supper, but the church where it is kept was closed. So then we went and visited a castle which was very exciting, even if the museum was also closed.
We left Milan for Monterosso, which is one of the cities that makes up Cinque Terra. These 5 cities are all connected to each other by trails along the cliff where no cars can access. We found a hostel online the day before and once we successful arrived, we found it closed for the season. I would like to state that i did try calling first, but it just rang, which seems to be normal for some hostels. Like the hostel, the city was pretty much closed. Everyone who owned a hotel came out as we walked by and asked if we needed a room. There were absolutely no tourists there but us and one american who directed us to where he found his hotel. But we settled on a hotel which was run by a very nice old italian couple. It was their grand daughter's first birthday that night and she was very small and quite captivated by my gloves. Since Cinque terre was pretty dead we decided we ought to move on to our next cities since we have only 2 weeks left and the rest of italy to see.
So we hopped on an early morning train to Pisa and walked over to the Tower which is very funny once it is right in front of you. That builing should never have existed. Aparently they noticed the lean after the third floor was put together but then the decided to keep going. Those crazy italians.
We off to Rome in only a few more minutes so i must go and walk to the train station.
TTFN
love,
grace
