Milano - a mixed day

Today started in a very leisurely manner after the exertions of yesterday, and we didn't leave the hotel until 10 am. The first goal was to walk to Gambara metro station - accomplished with no problems. Buying metro tickets was slightly problematic at first (I chose a machine that didn't work), but was easy to learn once someone showed me what to do. The next goal was to travel to the Duomo - easy because this is eight stops away from Gambara with no changes.

Once at the Duomo we looked around and took pictures, just like everyone else. At the top of the large piazza in front of the Duomo are situated the hop-on/hop-off buses. A 24 hour ticket cost 25€, not 22€ as advertised (probably an old price); I would be pushed to say that we got our money's worth. The first bus ride that we took was the Red line; we didn't see anything interesting on this ride except for the Milano Centrale train station that is an extremely imposing building. There was a cold wind blowing that didn't help our general disappointment.

After we returned to the Duomo piazza, we walked to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, chic shopping arcade. This too was a disappointment, apart from the mosaics on the floor. The pictures of the arcade and the Duomo must have been taken at night, because not a soul can be seen in them. In real life, they are teeming with people, especially the arcade. At the far side of the arcade is a garden area with an interesting statue of Leonardo (presumably da Vinci). This was more interesting than the previous three activities.

Once we had finished there, I suggested that we walk back to the bus stop at the Duomo so that we could try another line. First we had to stop at a restaurant where we had a reasonable lunch, once again spaghetti al pomodoro. The price rises each time we have this.

Back at the bus stop, a D line bus was waiting. Once underway, its route was slightly more interesting until we came to the Castello stop; I saw far away some form of castle and suggested that we get off the bus to explore - after all, this is the point of the hop-on/hop-off experience.

A good call! It turned out that this castle was the Castello Sforzesco although at first we weren't aware of all its offerings. The first thing that we saw were the water spouts in the front of the castle. Once past this, we saw that the castle had a wide courtyard - the atmosphere reminded me of the grounds around the leaning tower of Pisa. We continued to walk further into the castle grounds and found another courtyard that led to another courtyard then out of the castle. 

Behind the castle is Parco Sempione which itself seems to be made up of several parts with a small lake in the middle. I continued walking to the end (or possibly the beginning) of the park in order to take pictures of the gate and the sculpture above it. I measured the distance from where I was (not even at the end of the park) back to the castle - just under a kilometre.

After thoroughly enjoying the castle and its environs, we decided not to continue our bus journey as there was a metro stop by the castle entrance and this stop was on the same line as both the Duomo and our local metro stop. So we returned to our starting point and I brought us home to the hotel. Afterwards I went out in a different direction to the Carrefour market in order to buy food - much cheaper than eating in restaurants all the time.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
838	04/05/2015	Losing the grouping	ERP, Excel
1026	04/05/2017	Priority tip: default parameter values	Priority tips
1498	04/05/2022	Carole Bayer Sager autobiography	Carole Bayer Sager, Song writing, Non-fiction books

Bellagio: crowded, crowded, crowded

This morning had better weather than yesterday so we decided that we would spend part of the day in Bellagio before heading to Milano. After breakfast and packing, we went down to meet the crowds waiting for ferries; eventually one for Bellagio came and the hordes alighted the boat. There was a woman with a clicker to count how many people came onto the boat: I don't know whether she stopped anyone, but the boat was packed solid with people. I should point out that I don't like crowds.

The ride to Bellagio was only about 15 minutes; when we disembarked, we discovered that all the world had decided to descend on Bellagio. Everywhere we went was crowded, a fact that very much diminished any enjoyment that I might have taken from Bellagio. Even without the crowds, I didn't see much that was very interesting. Many more shops than Menaggio, of course (and Menaggio had more shops than Varenna), but few were interesting.

After a poor lunch in a restaurant overlooking the lake (in retrospect, the lunch in Menaggio was better and cheaper), we queued for our return ferry. 15 minutes later we were back in Varenna; we went into our hotel, picked up the luggage and had a taxi ordered to take us to the train station.

At some points during the day there is a train once an hour from Varenna to Milano, whereas at other times, there is a train once every two hours. We of course arrived at the train station during the two hour gap, so we had plenty of time to wait. During that time the platform filled and overflowed with people. Eventually the train came and we all piled on; someone gave up their seat for my wife but I had to stand all the way for the 65 minute journey. It was very uncomfortable, not only because I was standing but also because the train was absolutely packed with no breathing room. Fortunately people got off during the ride, so the occupation rate was reduced to maybe 125% instead of 175%.

Once back in Milano Centrale, we made our way slowly to the taxi rank and after only a brief wait were taken to our hotel which is quite some way from the centre. Why pay more for a hotel in the centre when there is an efficient metro system (this remains to be seen)? The hotel is modern, in complete contrast to the Varenna hotel. We dragged ourselves out for food, and after a false start in an osteria where we found nothing that we wanted to (or could) eat on the menu, we crossed the road to a nice pizzeria. I had a pizza tonno e cipolla whereas my wife had a margherita con acciughe. We then staggered back to the hotel, very tired.

Cleaning up a few matters: when digging out the train tickets from my jacket pocket, I discovered that each ticket came with a double receipt: one for Milano to Varenna (which I saw) and one for Varenna to Milano (which I didn't see before). Each ticket was for 5.7€.

The first night in Varenna we ate in a restaurant next to the hotel; the second night the restaurant appeared to be closed, as was last night. In the hotel when we came back from Bellagio was one of the waitresses from that first night so I asked her what happened to the restaurant in the past two days (do they open only once a week?). Wednesday night there was service inside the restaurant, because of the bad weather, and Thursday night the restaurant is always closed. So that mystery was cleared up. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
477	03/05/2012	Some MBA metadata	MBA, Project management, Finance
837	03/05/2015	Preparing for Florence	Holiday, Home movies, Florence, Italy
949	03/05/2016	Grandpa No'am	Personal, Grandfather
1214	03/05/2019	Diet (part two)	Health, Diet
1314	03/05/2020	A good weekend	DBA, Kindle, Grandfather, Covid-19
1497	03/05/2022	ShoesOnLine (another pointless day-in-the-life-blog)	Shoes
1614	03/05/2023	Passports/2	Israel, Erythritol