Milan, Italy, Europe

Today we moved on from Amsterdam and jetted over to Milan, Italy. We had a few hours to spare this morning in the Dam so walked around and found something for lunch before heading out to the airport. It’s a perfect system in Amsterdam: tram from anywhere in the city to Centraal Station and then a direct train to the airport in about 20 minutes. You can’t really get it wrong, which is good for us!

We made it to Milan after being delayed for about a half hour, which is to be expected when flying Easyjet. When we got to Rome, we couldn’t remember what company our car hire had been booked under. Ryan had paid for it through an Expedia-like company, but they never passed on the info for which company our car hire was actually through. So we wandered around the car hire booths for a little while asking each of them if they had a reservation for us. Eventually we found Maggiore and they had our car!

So now came the REALLY adventurous part. Ryan didn’t really have extended experience driving a manual transmission, but he was determined to give it a try. We had a 40 mile drive to the south of Milan to our hotel, so he was going to have to figure it out fast. But he did, there were a couple of bumpy patches, but overall he did really well considering the lack of experience in a stickshift.

We made it to our hotel and I was starting to wonder why I ever picked this one. It was quite far out of town, which was fine for us driving, but the hotel itself looked like it was shut down. I’m not sure why, but the windows are all covered with the metal shades that businesses put on their windows. So from the road it looked as if all the windows were boarded up. We made our way in, and much to our surprise, the hotel was actually very nice inside. Free WIFI and breakfast also help the image as well!

We found a nice little Italian place down the street and got some pizzas. They sure beat the heck out of Pizza Hut. We’re definitely in Italy now!!