À bientôt Suisse et ciao Italia!

We said some sad goodbyes to Vero and her family after a wonderful weekend in the mountains and headed off to Milan. A pretty busy but uneventful train ride and we arrived into what Michael described as "a pretty unimpressive train station"... that was until we walked off the platform. It then rose dramatically to within the top five buildings that we saw in Milan!

In Milan we stumbled upon what could be up there with the best hostel we have both ever stayed at, the Ostello Bello Grande. This is a destination hostel which provides basically whatever you need and thinks of ingenious ways to help you feel at home. This included free breakfast and dinner, free pasta and vegetables to cook if you're hungry, endless free coffee and tea and just what we needed to cheer ourselves up - a free beer on the garden terrace upon arrival! We settled into the hostel and spent the rest of the night planning some more of how we are going to get home.

As it turns out the day we were planning to visit the Duomo,

Wednesday the 15th, is a feast day and public holiday in Italy so it would've been shut. As this is the biggest attraction in Milan, we decided to go on Tuesday instead. We managed to get tickets the following morning after a roam into town through a park and the city walls. So far Italy seems dead, lots of people shut up shop and go on holiday during August so most of the people you find are fellow tourists centred around all the main attractions! This meant a line of one hour to get through security and inside. We were trying to work out whether we would need to drink our water before we went in but the longer we stood in the queue the more we came to realise that they just wanted to make sure it was actually water - they made you drink a sip so they could see what it was!

This is the fifth biggest cathedral in the world (not that the Catholics were competitive or anything!) and is another cathedral that took a long time to be finished. It was started in 1386 and was not finished until Napolean was crowned king of Italy and demanded the facade to be finished saying that the local administration would be reimbursed by the French treasury. The money was never paid, but it did give the locals a push to finish it, which they did in 1812.

Inside we admired a plain but impressive design and thousands of

statues adorning the 52 interior columns, the treasury, and the crypt of Saint Carlo Borromeo (one of Milan's Archbishops who worked with the poor during the plague and was made a saint soon after he died. He is also the Patron Saint of Stomach Disorders, not the flashest title). The most entertaining part was watching all those who are inappropriately dressed working out how to wear their disposable ponchos! Not sure these really make much of a difference! But the most impressive part is definitely the view from the roof terraces through all the arches and statues with a view over Milan out to the Alps.

Later that evening we headed down to the area by the canals, Navigli, to partake in the Italian pastimes of la passegiata and aperitivo. A stroll and a drink coming with small snacks. This is where we truly learnt the value of mozzie spray! After the first of hopefully many pizzas in Italy for dinner, we headed back to the hostel for some much needed sleep.