Cinque Terre and Milan, Italy
This morning had a bit of frustration. The late start and the fire yesterday lead to a later than desired arrival in Cinque Terre. I wanted to get going early so that we would still have ample time to see the five towns and make it to our reservation to see the Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper at 3pm in Milan.
We didn’t make the 9:30am train. Trains only run about every hour, so we had to wait until nearly 10:30am to take the next one. By the time we made it to Riomaggiore, the furthest town out from where we were staying, we basically had to turn around if we were going to make it to make our Last Supper tour. I could tell Ben wanted to bail on the tour. I wasn’t stoked on this as in my opinion there was basically one reason to go to Milan and that was to see the painting. It is difficult to get tickets, we booked them three months in advance, so if we didn’t leave now, we weren’t seeing it. We didn’t see it. We missed the last return train that gave us a shot at getting out of town fast enough to make it up the autobahn. I was bummed and sort of still am. I suppose the glass half full response will be that this gives me a reason to go back to Milan in the future.
Since we had no shot at seeing the Last Supper we decided to wander around Cinque Terre a bit longer. We explored Riomaggiore and Manarola. We couldn’t hike into Corniglia because of lingering earthquake damage. We did manage to take some pretty cool pictures and see some beautiful sites.
Before setting off for Milan Ben wanted to hop in the Ligurian Sea. I wanted to swim the previous evening but didn’t this afternoon as I had already showered and we had checked out of the room. The hotel had a community bathroom with a shower that Ben planned to use. Since Ben was wet when we got back to the hotel I asked the front desk lady for a towel. She obliged. I took it to Ben outside. He then walked straight into the hotel toward the bathroom without toweling off. It was hilarious, The woman behind the desk started yelling at him in Italian and pointing at the floor. It made me uncomfortable. Since I had to wait for Ben to shower before we left I went to buy us some soda for the drive. When I returned Ben was close to ready to go. I went back inside to use the restroom one last time. The lady apologized to me profusely for her behavior. Her English wasn’t great and my Italian is non-existent, but the gist of the conversation was that she was really upset because she had just cleaned the floors. I tried to explain it was no problem and that I expected Ben to drive off too. That’s why I asked for the towel. I continued on by trying to convey Ben is so dang smart that sometimes he misses super obvious things. This was too big of a stretch for our language barrier, so I concluded by telling her boys are crazy and that she was totally forgiven. She seemed pleased. We were finally off to Milan.
The three hour drive to Milan started out aggressive and ended up being uneventful. I kept me eyes open long enough to take a photo of the fire damage on the way out of town, navigate to the autobahn, blog a little and locate where we should go upon arrival. Staring at my computer to make plans and blog a little, mixed with the aggressive driving, made me a bit car sick. Fortunately I rallied quickly after a few minutes of keeping my eyes closed.
We decided to have a low key evening. Our hotel had fairly fast internet, so Ben and I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up on world happenings. We video chatted with my parents for an hour or so. I got a chance to say hi to Chippy and Ben was able to consult a physician on his ridiculously gross bug bite on his ankle. We then asked at the front desk for a restaurant recommendation we could walk to. I loved the place where we ate. Milan isn’t necessarily known for its food but this place was great. When we came in the lady sat us, handed us Italian menus and raddled off something. I smiled and said hi. She then apologized profusely in the little English she spoke and brought us English menus. At the end of the night a husband and wife in cooking garb came out of the kitchen, sat in a booth and embarked on a feast. I have a feeling they have been doing this exact thing for forty years. I wish I had a picture to show you. It was a pretty cool scene. If any of you are ever staying on the outskirts of Milan I would highly recommend eating at Su Barrile.
Another day in Italy is in the books. Tomorrow we plan to explore Milan a little and then we’ll be off to Venice, our final stop on the Italian portion of this journey.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
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