The Stroms Are Here

Last evening after filling ourselves with delicious pasta at the Victoria Grill, we sat out on the terrace of our hotel to try to cool off. We met a couple from Australia and chatted for a couple hours about travel, the Australian healthcare system and ours. Interesting discussion. Anyway, we watched a beautiful sunset and then had a good nights sleep.

This morning we got organized for our train trip back to Milan, had breakfast, but inside this morning. Tables were set inside because it was "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" (sorry, that was for Kelli and Dakota). It was a bit breezy but it was such a relief from the last few days !

Our taxi arrived at 10am, as our train was leaving at 10:35am. We wanted to be ready to jump on board, Remember we only have one minute, literally, to get our bags (and me) on. Ken goes to stamp our train tickets but "machine eees kapot" Okay, here comes the train.The stress builds and Ken gets his usual sweaty hands. The train stops, the bags get thrown on board and then Ken helps me up the steep steps. We sit down so relieved that we made it. Then we find out we're on the wrong train! Not to worry, we are on the milks run that will stop in the town of Lecco, where we have to get off and we get to do it all over again. The good news was that we got help from a very cute young man with one heck of a grin. "I help?" he asked. "You betcha. I can see Italy from my house !" (I'll try and make this my last Sarah Palin joke. I don[t want to have to apologize 7 times like David Letterman.)

Sondra, I forgot to answer your question about whether Bella (our GPS) is working. We haven't really used it yet, but she appears to know she is in Italy. A 1st good sign.

THE STROMS ARE HERE !Ken and I waited in the hotel lobby and saw them pull up in the taxi.about 4:30pm. Their driver apparently didn't know where he was going and their cab ride was 3 times as much as it should have. They shook it off, went to their room to shower and were ready to hit the subway within 45 minutes. Off to Luini for goodies again, twisted on the bulls testicles, walked around the outside of The Duomo and watched as musicians went up an outside elevator (very scary looking) to the top of The Duomo. They were going in groups and we never found out what was going on. We then had gelato and watched the action on the Piazza. It looked like a movie was being filmed, and their was a singer at another area being filmed. We headed back to the hotel around 8:30pm. The Stroms long day caught up with them (and we were tired too).