Italia!

OKay friends, here goes.  Quick little update from Milano, Italy before we head out to sit in a park and then hop a train to Venice.  Woohoo!  Warning: the majority of this email is a copy/paste from an email Donnie sent to our families, but I'm trying to speed up the process a bit.

Our trip so far:

We left Rouen at 9:30 a.m. on Monday. Due to some work on the train tracks between Rouen and Paris we ended up taking a train to Amiens, France where we walked around a bit, and then a train from Amien to Paris. We arrived in the city at about 1:30 p.m. and spent far too long searching for the luggage storage place in the station. After that we met up with a friend from the U of I Theatre Dept (holla Cdales!), and visited Sacre Coeur, an impressive cathedral in Montmartre. We took the 300 stairs up to the top of the dome and were treated to a 360 degree view of the city, which was rather lovely.  Every time I have been up high in Paris (Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, now the Sacre Coeur), I have been astounded by how white Paris is, as a city.  It's not dirty and grungy looking from up high.  We headed from there to the Moulin Rouge which as everyone said, is anti-climactic.

[This is the part where I told Donnie he had to hurry up because he had been writing for 10 minutes and was still in Paris.  So the rest becomes a *bit* more brief.]

We then nearly missed our bus to Milan after jogging through Paris. Our seats were far from luxurious and they showed some crappy movies, but, with the help of some tylenol pm, we were able to get some sleep.  It certainly wasn't ideal but it was by far the cheapest form of transportation to get to Milan and to be honest, we both got off the bus and said, "hmm not perfect, but we would do it again."  So there you go.  We arrived in Milan at 6:15 a.m., an hour ahead of schedule. We got a 24 hour transportation pass and used that to go to our hostel where we dropped our stuff off and headed back out. We saw some of the main sites of Milan (The Duomo and the Castello Sforzesco). For lunch we had Panzoretti from a place called  Panzoretti Luini, which always has a long line apparently. They were kind of like a fried Calzone, but better. One of the finer things I've ever tasted.  Donnie got one with ham, I got one with ricotta and spinach, and we each got the "basic" one with tomato and mozzarella.  Sooooo good.  We followed that up with Gelato (pistachio and milaga (rum-raisin ish) for D and crema and strawberry for me) and then headed back to our hostel for a glorious and much needed 2 hour nap.

In Milan, a lot of restaurants do a happy hour in which you buy an expensive drink and that gets you access to a buffet of sorts, which is what we did for dinner.  We went to a place called Volo, and, despite their "It's Miller Time" sign, it was a really cool place. I got a Mint Julep and Donnie got a Japan Ice Tea and we stuffed ourselves on appetizer-y food. They had grilled vegetables and pasta salads and amazing breads and fennel with balsamic vinegar and cheesy balls, among other things.  We ate like royalty.  We went back to see the Duomo lit up at night and then turned in. This morning we are getting ready to go at a leisurely pace.  Our train for Venice leaves at 2:30 so we're going to do a little bit more exploring between now and then.

We've already taken over 400 pictures between us, so I anticipate that once we get home, it'll take us a bit of time to sort through our pictures before we get them up here, but we can't wait to share them with you.  Woohoo!

And, I feel like I should mention: this city is a delight.  I feel so absolutely comfortable here, the public transportation makes sense, and people are so helpful.  Before arriving, I had this preconceived notion that Milan was going to be this stylish place and we were going to stick out like sore thumbs as being the ugly Americans but actually, I feel so comfortable here, just wandering around and getting lost.  And I really want to learn Italian now. 

Until the next time!  (Oh, and we won't have wireless in our hostel in Venice for the next 3 days so you probably won't hear anything from us, but that just means we're out enjoying the city!  À la prochaine!)