Our Mid Life Crisis Gap Year: Finally, Italy.....Milano

It was a good idea to stop over in Dubai as the trip from there to Milan was just on 6 hours, so we arrived refreshed and ready to go, or at least we thought we were! Getting from Malpensa airport (about 50kms outside of Milan) to Milan was very easy, we just slipped down to the rail station under the International terminal, bought our tickets, and where on our way..there was also plenty of space for our luggage.

So it was not long before we were pulling into Milano Stazione Centrale ... travelling is easy, or so we thought. The station was in a bit of a mess when we arrived with works going on both inside and outside of the station, and this made it harder to move around and/or find what you are looking for. We knew that all we had to do was to find the Bus Ticket Office and then bus 81 to take us to near to our hotel......damn, this turned into "Mission Impossible"!

Firstly, we found the Tourist Information office, and the English speaking window, in asking for directions to the Bus Ticket Office we got the detailed reply of "Upstairs one level, goodbye"...well, somebody was having a bad day!

Well, as it turned out it was us having the bad day...it took an hour to find the ticket office and the bus to our hotel, thanks to the locals that assisted us getting to each...otherwise we could still be there. In hindsight I think we were more tired than what we thought as the whole process should have only taken 15 minutes or so...oh well, these things happen. So a short bus ride later we arrived at our hotel.....

Hotel San Francisco, our home in Milano.

So, we settled into our room, and decided to get stuck into our duty free alcohol and relax for a while...Lesley popped down to reception to get the ice while I was left to unpack...something not quite fair about the allocation of duties here!

Lesley with the ice for our drinks in the worlds smallest retro elevator!!

The room itself was great, it had everything we needed plus we had a great newly renovated bathroom.

Great little room had everything we needed

Bathroom had alll of the latest Italian fixtures

Later that afternoon, after casually demolishing a bottle of Bailey's between us, we decided to explore the local neighbourhood..within a hundred meters of the hotel I found the car of my dreams...a Fiat 600, I think if I had found the owner I would have made on offer then and there.

A Fiat 600 in need on some TLC.

Just around the corner we found the local Supermarket, while Lesley was busy looking at all of the different foods I found myself in the alcohol section staring at the prices in disbelief..the prices were anywhere from half to one sixth of what we paid back home, Lesley came and got me out of there before I spent the whole Italian trip in an alcoholic stupor.

Really good beer at a really good price!

That night we went out for a casual meal at the local "ristorante".. too tired and probably a bit jet lagged (mind you the Bailey's did not help) to muck around looking though the menu we ordered a Pizza with a Salad, plus we had beer and wine...all of this came to the amazing price of under 20 Euros (or AUS$30)..what a bargain!!!!