The epic tale of Venice and Milan (abridged)

Well, as usual, a lot has happened lately. Last weekend was a three-day weekend, so I went to Venice and Milan with my friends Xenn and Katie. Venice was absolutely beautiful, and just plain old. Everything about it announced that it had been around for ages, and had seen more than its share of history. Getting to the city was exciting. We got on our first train, and misunderstood when the last stop was, so when the train started moving back to where we'd come from, we were more than a little worried. It ended up being a short mistake, though. We got off ont the first stop we got to and got on the next train, which came in 15 minutes, then got off at the right stop and were back on track. 3 train changes, 2 hour-long layovers, and a LOT of confusion later, we arrived in Venice at 5:30 pm, after picking up our first train at 6:15 that morning. Yes, we spent all day on trains. We walked around Venice a little bit, originally looking for a restaurant that was recommended in my Italy for Dummies book, called Trattoria della Madonna. However, we got to the restaurant at 6:20 and it didn't open until 7, so we had some time to kill, which we used perusing the nearby tourist stands. We went back to the restaurant early, about 6:50 (we were starving), and it's a good thing we did. The restaurant was already almost full already - apparently they had decided to open early due to demand. We finished off the free bread and the appetizer of fresh crab quickly (norhern Italy is known for its seafood, even more so than the rest of Italy, so we had to try some). It was amazing - the crab was absolutely perfect. We all got seafood entrees too - Katie got fish soup alla Venezia, Xenn got a whole lobster, and I got what was basically an eel steak. It was absolutely delicious. We all sampled each others food, and there was nothing that was even remotely sub-par. The meal was expensive, but we were in Venice, we'd just spent all day on trains... we figured we deserved it. Our hotel was in a nearby town, so after dinner we caught a train and went to the hotel, which was fortunately around the corner and a couple blocks away from the train station. We were exhausted. Katie and I went to sleep right after our showers, but I think Xenn stayed up and walked around for a while. The next day we ditched our original plan of spending half the day in Venice and half in Verona and just spent the day in Venice. We went shopping for masks, cloaks, hats, Murano glass - all the things Venice is known for. We didn't even see any museums or anything - we were all about museum-ed out.

We weren't done until the evening anyway, so we caught an evening train to Milan and decided to go straight to our hotel there to drop off our bags before dinner. Unfortunately, we had no idea how to get around Milan, so we ended up calling a cab and driving to our hotel. We got dinner a few blocks away at a quiet little restaurant (unlike the one the hotel attendant recommended which was packed and had a line) and ordered simple but filling dinners of pizza, pasta, and rice with - yep - more seafood. When we got back to the hotel, we had a good time trying on all our masks and taking pictures. Showers and bedtime again, ready to tackle Milan in the morning.

As it turns out, Milan is one of the cleanest, easiest to navigate big cities I've ever been to. We had a bit of a rough start in the morning figuring out how to take the trolly and where to get tickets, and which one to take, but once we figured it out (and the locals were really nice and very helpful), it was super easy. We ended up buying a daypass for 3 Euro apiece, which works on any of the public transportation methods in town for the whole day. We were able to access anything in the city within 15 minutes. We took the trolly to the duomo, which is possibly the largest church I have ever seen, and Katie said it was more impressive (and imposing) than the Notre Dame. It was spectacularly beautiful, with tall, slender spires and marble that had blue and pink swirls in it, making you unsure what color it was and making it appear to change colors throughout the day. The inside was just as impressive as the outside, and the center aisle seemed to go on forever. It was so large, they set up tv screens all down the hall so people could see the altar. Since it was a Sunday, touring was a bit limited, but it was still impressive. After the duomo, we took the subway (which is infinitely cleaner and easier to use than even New York's) to a castle, where the Pieta is being held (one of three - this one was the last unfinished piece). It was amazing - you come around a wall, and there it is - no rope, no glass, just sitting there. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

We finally left the castle and decided to hold off on food until we got closer to the train station. We took the subway back to the station (5 min on the red line, 10 on the yellow) and ate at one of the nearby pizzarias. Most. Expensive. Pizza. Ever. 10 euro for an 8-inch pizza. But, as they knew we would be, we were hungry and in a hurry, so we had to do it. It was that or McDonalds. We went to the station, which took forever to navigate - it's huge. 3 stories of train station. We bought our ticket at 4:20... for a train that left at 4:30. It was expensive, but only 4 hours, instead of 12. We ran up two stories of slanted moving sidewalks and jumped into the 4th car instead of the 7th that we were assigned to, walking back through the train for 3 more cars. It was exciting and scary, but we made it, and were soon on an express train back to Firenze (Florence), where we would have to buy another ticket to Orvieto. But that ticket was only 11 euro and took an hour and a half. Problem was, we had over an hour to kill until it left, so we went to the pizzaria that we'd stopped at on the way to Venice and got more pizza. We managed to catch a bus up to the top of Orvieto from the train station at 11:30, and were home by midnight.

Amazing trip, great memories, sooo crazy.