Pizzeria, Gelatoria, Spagettoria, Patiseria...

Erin here. I've met up in Milan with my friend Libby from high school.  She made it in very early this morning and I was so so happy to see her!

Yesterday the weather was beautiful and I had the whole day to kill by myself.  After a leisurely breakfast I did a little track workout on a dirt track with some Italian high schoolers who had to run during gym class (they loved it).  I then took the Metro into the center of Milan to the Duomo (a large church with a thousands of spires, as Libby said, 'If I fell from the sky I would not want to fall on that).   Supposedly at the Duomo Metro stop there was a tourism office, however this simply turned out to be an information office for the Metro and proved unhelpful for getting a map/locating the hotel.  I bought a map, sat outside the Duomo and ate some lunch, and then attempted to locate the hotel on the map.  The hotel adress 'via G. Prati' was not located on the map's street index, but 'via G. Prevati' was, I assumed I had made a mistake in writing down the adress and started walking in the direction of the hotel. 

Milan is an old, European city.  It's kind of dirty and not too pretty, but it has old cobblestone streets and ancient little trolly trams for public transportation.  The guys do ride mopeds everywhere, just like in the movies.  The town is famous for its shopping.  I felt really out of place as I walked down streets selling Rollex, Lacoste, stillettos, cashmire sweaters, and diamond crusted boots while I wore my jeans and grungy gray sweatshirt and carried my dirty, mud-speckled pannier in my arms like it was my baby.

After about an hour of peaceful, meditative, and observant walking I approaced via G. Prevati, at which point I thought to myself, 'via g. prevati is pretty different from via g. prati, I don't usually make big mistakes like that.'  I walked down the entire road to where number 6 should have been, but right between number 4 and number 8 was just a gap with a metal fence.  Great.  I thought either I was scammed or G. Prevati was not the right road.  I kicked myself for giving all these directions to Libby for finding the hotel, but didn't write them down for myself.

So, what did I do?  I searched for a McDonalds, sat down, and attempted to get on their free wifi with my iTouch.  My iTouch didn't pick up their signal however, and I was getting a little nervous.  I scanned the map and luckily my eye caught a tiny little road called 'via G. Prati'.  I was so relieved, it wasn't too far away either.  It took me about 20 more minutes to walk there, and when I turned the corner onto the street and saw the hotel sign I was so happy!

Today Libby and I explored more of the city, saw the ancient fortress that is an entrance to the old city and ate Gelato in a Gelatoria.  I like how it's so easy to tell what every shop here sells because you just add 'oria' to the item that's sold.  Italy is great because they have real donuts (none of those fake donuts they sell in France) as well as tons of cheeses and breads and fresh fruits and vegetables.  Tonight we're going to enjoy a true Italian meal (on Italian time of course) and then head out early early tomorrow morning to take a train to Venice.  We'll spend a day in Venice and then Libby will head back to Berlin (where she is studying with the Stanford program) and I'll head to Lausanne.  I'll pick up my bike and meet McKayla on Monday and bike with her the rest of the way to Marseille!