As opposed to all the other days of this holiday, I woke early on Tuesday morning. We had done most of the packing the day before, but there were always more things to pack.
After a final filling breakfast, we took our taxi driver's advice and went to the Duomo looking for the ODStore; if one stands with one's back to the Duomo, then this shop is at the top left hand corner of the piazza. Leaving the Duomo station at the Via Torino exit will bring one to the shop. This is a shop filled to the brim with many kinds of chocolate and biscuits, although I wasn't overly impressed with it. Prices are somewhat variable: I bought in Carrefour several bars of Nero Limone chocolate at about 1.30€, whereas ODStore was selling them for about 3.50€. I saw the same bars in the duty free shops of Malpensa airport for 5€ each, so it's just as well that I stocked up in Carrefour. Opposite the ODStore is a toy shop where my wife bought a variety of toys for our grandchildren. The prices varied from seemingly cheap to reasonable to expensive (anything with a logo). I was more worried about how we would fit all these purchases into our suitcase than about the cost.
There was a light rain falling that made walking about the area inappropriate (I had left my umbrella back at the hotel). Looking down a side street, we saw a good cafe - the Princi bakery. It was a bit confusing at first to know in which queue to stand; I was told (in Italian) that I was standing in the wrong place and that the queue for paying was to the left. We had a delectable large slice of lemon meringue pie along with the traditional tea with milk.
Then it was back to the hotel. We still had several hours to fill before the taxi driver would pick us up. The previous evening next to the metro stop before ours I had seen a shop that purported to sell THE chocolate that I truly love (Baretti e Milano), so I took the opportunity to fill the dead time to walk to this shop. To my surprise, the metro stop was much closer than I had imagined (not much further from the hotel than the stop that we used) but I couldn't find that shop. Shame.
While waiting for the taxi, our travel agent sent us a message saying that the flight had been delayed by an hour, leaving at 23:55. There wasn't much that we could do, so after the driver picked us up and deposited us at Malpensa, we had to wait for more than two hours before we could even check in, due to security reasons. Then we had more time to sit around and do nothing, especially as the airplane hadn't even arrived by 23:55. Boarding was accomplished at about 00:30 Wednesday morning; we landed in Israel some time after 5 am and arrived home at 07:30. I showered and went to bed for a few hours sleep, although that's not enough.
My phone had run out of electricity some time yesterday (Tuesday) so the first thing that I did after arriving was to charge it. By the time I woke up, it had reached 100% which is good; I think that the phone was wasting battery power by looking for networks or something similar. Now the battery is at 94% capacity.
The clip on the top of my mp3 player had broken at some stage. Whilst this of course does not affect the ability to play music, it's mildly annoying and I'll have to order a new one (if it's still being made). When I got home, I discovered that my XP computer would not boot. I knew that it was offline as there was a power cut on the kibbutz a few days ago, but there seems to be something wrong with the hard disk. I've disconnected the computer from everything and will open it up some time, primarily in order to clean out all the dust and dog hair that has accumulated inside. If it won't work after that then it's to the repairman. Thus three electrical devices have either ceased working or need repairing.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 72 | (Welcome to the) Hotel California | Van der Graaf Generator, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, CSN, Barney Hoskyns | |
| 130 | Amsterdam diary | Programming, Holiday, Amsterdam | |
| 357 | More facts your mother never told you about Word automation | Programming, Office automation | |
| 581 | Analysing my sleep | CPAP, Gadgets | |
| 704 | Doctoring, researching, sampling | DBA, Kindle | |
| 1500 | 1500 blogs | Meta-blogging |
No comments:
Post a Comment