Italy, Day 2

The subtitle of this post should be “The day of travel”.  Nothing grandiose. 

After a great night’s sleep in the Hotel Bologna in Pisa, Mark and I awoke to lots of rain.  Thankfully at this point we were half a day ahead of schedule and didn’t have to see the leaning tower in the rain.  We had a yummy continental breakfast and then started our 4 hour drive to Milano.  I am happy to announce that I drove 2 of those hours and only got honked at once.  And  I’m happy to announce that I won’t be driving again.  It actually wasn’t that bad, but I was so tense because if you are passing in the left hand lane you better floor it because some Maserati going 200 kpm will mow you down.  Some old lady even flashed her lights at me to move over and Miss Groovy Nuvi (our GPS announcer) kept telling me I was going too fast.  Go figure.  I was able to drive through the mountains of Northern Tuscany and pass through at least a dozen tunnels.  Mark made the comment that parts of the mountains looked like his native New England. 

 

We even passed our favorite pasta maker…

We arrived in Milan at our Marriott Hotel at 2:15 and sat around in the lobby for 45 minutes waiting for our room to be ready.  We we were told it would be 15 minutes.  I should mention that check-in time is any time after 2:00 pm.  Mark read reviews people wrote about those who used hotel points to stay places and lots of people had nothing but negative things to say like they had bad service, yada yada yada.  But we were optimistic.  After our experience I am now one of those who believe you get treated like crap when you use your rewards points.  To make a long story short we wasted 1.5 hours waiting around and trying to get what we made reservations for 5 months ago.  But I guess we will have to be content to stay in our first floor, two twin bedroom.  Yup, Mark and I don’t get to share a bed tonight.  Lame, huh?  I know you are all thinking “Oh, poor Marcia gets to stay in Italy in a nice hotel for free.  Waa waa”, but we all need something to complain about. 

After things were ‘settled’ we dropped off luggage and headed out to the city.  We walked everywhere to see the sites at night, eat dinner and pastries and gelato.  I had my first panzerotto (a kind of fried calzone), a Nutella-filled croissant, and the obligatory gelato (this time chocolate and hazelnut).  My goal is to have gelato at least once every day.  We were able to see the Galleria, the Duomo, a castle and other cool stuff.  Mostly we did lots of window shopping.  Here are a few things we saw. 

This Louis Vuitton purse only cost 800 Euros (about $1200).

I’m not into high heeled shoes but I really loved these Prada’s.  They only cost 410 Euros ($600).

And these purses are 1,650 Euros ($2,300).  For some reason Mark didn’t buy me any of these things. 

And here is a picture for Jared and Leslie.  This is the latest Vespa model.  We think this orange hue is perfect for Jared.  We may have room in our luggage to bring one home if he wants…

We headed back to the hotel after an exhausting day of walking.  Tomorrow we are splurging and riding the Metro.  We used our GPS to add up our total mileage walked; total miles – about 6.  So tired.  But we are planning on staying up late so we can talk to the girls when they get home from school.  Ciao!