Mamma Mia Milano!

The Duomo in Milan...it's under a little construction!
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So I'm writing this a really long time after I acutally went so it's not going to be as detailed but still interesting!

The second weekend I was here me and my two friends I came with, Tanna and Laura, decided to go to Milan for a day to check out what all the hype was about. It was our first time travelling anywhere since we first got here and it was interesting!

We headed to the train station not really knowing what to expect but to get on a train and head for Milan. When we arrived we found the ticket machines and thank goodness they were in English because there are a lot of things I don't understand about train tickets in Italian! Unfortunately we had to wait an hour and half to get on the train because the 5pm train was booked. We sat around in a restuarant and talked and read for school.

A statue in the main square of Milan
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When we finally got on the train it was nice and the seats were comfortable. The train ride was about 3 hours long so I read my nice fat coursepack for econ that week. Fun! We arrived at about 10pm and a really nice Italian woman helped us find where we could catch a cab to our hotel.

We found our hotel on www.cheaprooms.com for really cheap since Milan doesn't have any centrally located hostels. When we arrived we were all actually surprised at how nice it was! When we were attempting to check in though Tanna realized she had forgotten her passport in Florence. The man at the desk made a huge deal about it and said we had to go to the police department and have them stamp a form Tanna had to fill out. We were so tired and hungry but we did what we had to do so we hopped back in a cab and headed for the police dept.! It was a pretty sketchy police department and since it was 10:30 at night we were a little wary. We had to wait for a while because all the police were investigating or interogating some African man and what looked like to me some prostitute! Haha! No worries Mom and Dad! We finally got Tanna's form stamped and headed back to the hotel. The man let us check in and told us pretty much the only place open around our hotel to get food! It's amazing because when you think of Italy you think restaurants must be open until the wee hours of the night and at least in Florence things are popping at that time of night but certainly not the case in Milan!

Another view of the main square
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We walked to the restaurant in the snow/rain. It was freezing when we went! Of course I got a pizza and we ordered some wine! My pizza looked so good to Laura and Tanna that they decided to "get another pizza for our friend" to take home. In other words they were embarassed to say it was for them to take back to the hotel! Haha! It was pretty amusing!

The next day we woke up early, checked out of the hotel and figured out the metro system and went to the center.