
A hot time in the old town of….Milano! (June 20, 2008)
We arrived at the central station of Milan around 1:30 p.m. (The train ride was rather uneventful, except for the oriental (American) family who got on the train having an argument/fight the likes of which we’d never heard before! It carried on quite a while. I guess the stress of traveling finally caught up with them. They certainly had no qualms about yelling at each other in front of anyone and everyone!) Following Rick Steves advice, we went straight to the tourist information office and picked up a map and Hello, Milano! newspaper. I casually asked the young lady if she could recommend an inexpensive safe place to stay near the station, and she phoned a friend at the Albergo Italia. After two to three minutes of catching up with her friend, she told us that he had a double room with the bath/shower in the hall (like a dormitory) for 52 euros per night. We could go look at it and see if would be acceptable. So, we headed out in that direction.
The “albergo” was not far at all, and the young man at the desk was very nice and helpful. We looked at the room, and other than the fact that it had no air conditioning and was on the street side of the hotel, it seemed fine. It was clean and there was an elevator! So, we decided we could stand it. (A far cry from ACIS’s 3-4 star hotels to a 1 star hotel!) We rested a bit (as we didn’t get much sleep the night before, remember), and then took off on a walk towards the city center, because Rick Steves said we should see the Duomo (cathedral) in the late afternoon sun. He was right. It was magnificent!
We walked quite a bit more, and finally our fatigue caught up with us. We decided for a cheap dinner at McDonalds. Let me just say that with the dollar in the situation it is in, a “meal deal” at McDonalds is running us 8-9 dollars. But we had eaten breakfast in the hotel at Venice, and sneaked out some quickly made sandwiches from the breakfast bar for lunch, so we really had a pretty inexpensive day! We purchased a 3 euro 24-hour public transportation pass and took the metro back to our “albergo”, where the nice young man (who’s name we never got, so I am going to name him Paolo) told us how to find the nearest internet café. After a stop there, we turned in for the night. Our reservations to see Leonardo’s Last Supper were at 9:15 the next morning!
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