Day Five: – Milan

On Sunday, the 6th of July, we had to get up extra early to catch the bus to Milan. We were told breakfast packs would be made available but, when we asked the desk clerk and the kitchen staff about it, they didn’t know what we were talking about. But, realizing our plight, they prepared … something.

We found out what that something was when the bus stopped for our “Picnic Breakfast” by pulling into a truck stop. It was all macadam and diesel fumes and articulated lorries and a convenience store-cum-café, and little else.

The café was large but a madhouse. You had to order your drinks, then simply hover around the few tiny, circular tables where you had to stand to eat. I waited at the counter to try to order something until someone told me I had to pay first, then get my drink. So, I left the scrum at the drinks counter and joined the scrum at the payment counter and ordered an Americano and a Latte. What I didn’t know was that, to an Italian, “latte” simply meant milk. One of our number found that out to her cost. Fortunately, I look stupid, so the clerk explained it to me, and my wife ended up with a cappuccino.

Armed with coffee, I joined my wife and one or two of the others at the tiny, stand-around table. We looked at the offerings in our packets—a slice of ham and cheese, a single slice of white bread and a manky apple—and threw them all in the trash. My coffee came with a small biscuit, so I broke it in half and that was breakfast for me and my wife. Not Newmarket’s finest hour.

The trip to Milan wasn’t as long as we feared and the day—which had threatened rain and had started out cloudy—soon cleared and turned hot. Our tour guide was better than the one we had for Parma, and we enjoyed the tour. Basically, the city (what was relevant to us) is between a huge castle and an over-the-top, ornate church. You could see one from the other so we couldn’t possibly get lost, which sounded like a challenge to me.

What I learned during the tour was that Milan is expensive. The cost of living is horrendous, and they rent flats, not by the month or week, but by the square metre. And the restaurants and cafés in the town centre have an occupancy charge, meaning to simply go in and sit costs you. Then you order. This fee can be as much as €15.

Milan is also a busy city, filled with tourists, pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles. They do have pedestrian crossings, and the cars do stop, but they blare their horns at the pedestrians until they are out of their way. It is an impatient city. Too frenetic. I would not want to live there.

After we were cut loose, four of us (sans Sally who was off on another adventure) went down a side-street to find a café where we could have a beverage and a biscuit without having to take out a second mortgage. We did all right. No sit-down fee, and drinks (coffee for three of us, and a beer for Sadie; she does like a drink, does our Sadie) and cake only came to €12 per person.

My goal in Milan was to buy a cigarette lighter and a coffee pot, and I managed both. The lighter I bought with the cigars had already worn out (must have been one of the special ‘tourist’ lighters), so I bought another tourist lighter near the ornate church. That should see me through the week. And on our walk from the castle to the church, we spotted a Bialetti shop, a welcome surprise because it was exactly what I needed. They had all sorts of sizes and colours and designs and accessories, and I managed to find the one I was looking for, which is the same one I have now, but without the annoying pressure leak that makes it whistle.

Walking around Milan (or Parma, or Paris, or Munich) I am always taken by the reminders of WWII: the mind-numbing destruction, the millions of lives lost, the millions more uprooted, the years of recovery, and the sad fact that it all happened because a formerly democratic population became enthralled by fascist ideology. Makes you think.

Back at base—and having caught up with Sally—the five of us went, in the usual manner, in search of a restaurant. On that evening, there was a storm coming in, but they still wandered about, rejecting one restaurant after another until finally, with the weather getting feisty, they decided on a restaurant where we were hurriedly hustled into a big, empty room made of steel girders and glass. About five minutes later, the wind whipped, and the rain pounded, and the room filled with people rushing in, holding their plates and half-filled glasses of wine. Once the hubbub died down, it was good fun watching the rain and the flashes of lightening.

By the time our dinner was over, and we were, once again, the only ones in the room; the storm had passed, giving way to a lovely evening.

Day Six – Venice

Venice has always been one of those places I read about but never thought I would see, so this was an exciting trip. I had no illusions, however, as I knew almost everyone else in the touristsphere felt the same, and almost all of them came to visit. Venice is so famously crowded that they instituted a tourism tax (a sort of cover charge, which I whole-heartedly applaud, and think other places should do it, as well) that has winnowed the crowds down a bit.

I can’t imagine living there, or even staying for a few days. It would be too much. A nice short visit, such as the one we were on, seemed perfect. And it was. The three of us (me, my wife, and Ellie-Mae; Sadie had already been there, and Sally was off on another solo adventure) even got to sit at a sidewalk café with coffee and a pastry to soak up the atmosphere. It really was nice.

In all the other cities we visited, there were bikes everywhere—speedy, silent, and fully expecting you to get out of their way—but in Venice, nothing with wheels is allowed. There were no joggers, either, but that’s because there simply isn’t room to jog due to all the tourists. Our guide did tell us that, before they started the cover charge, instead of being merely crowded, we’d be standing shoulder to shoulder with the other tourists.

Before we left, we took an hour-long boat tour around the bay and a woman told us lots of interesting things over the tannoy that sounded to me like “wkisuhj a lidhp alkfdoih dasoi oih;oadih foiadhhf hkdfj” but the scenery was pretty.

And so, I did Venice: I saw a gondola, I visited St. Mark’s Square, I took a photo of the Bridge of Sighs*, and I walked along the canals. I don’t need to go back.

* Other Bridge of Sighs franchise locations include: Cambridge, Chester, Oxford, Glasgow, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Szeged in Hungary, Santa Barbara, Reno, Pittsburgh, New York City, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Lima, Peru.

We got back to base at 7:00 pm to find Sally and Sadie waiting for us. I had assumed they would just go off to dinner without us, but they waited, which was very kind of them.

We did the usual dinner song and dance and ended up eating at the hotel because it was raining.

As had happened all week, bread was put on the table before any plates arrived, and Sally took a piece and poured oil and vinegar on it, which of course ran all over the tablecloth. I wondered if this was an Italian tradition, or if she just didn’t care because she wasn’t the one doing the laundry.

On that night, we ordered dessert, and I was expecting some good, Italian ice cream. All that was on offer, however, were the standard desserts we’d get back home, so I ordered a Crème Brule. However, if someone had given it to me with no explanation, I would never have guessed it to be a Crème Brule.

Still, it was good, and as the rain had stopped, Sadie and I retired to the roof garden, and I got to listen to more of her crazy. It was a good evening.

Day Seven – Ma Ma Ma My Verona

On our last day, we went to Verona. It was lovely. Less frenetic than Milan and a lot less crowded than Venice. Our tour guide was the best one so far, and we learned a lot about the city. It has a huge Roman amphitheatre that is still used as a music venue, a nice market, lots of cafés and shops and restaurants, and streets paved in pink marble because they quarry it nearby and they get it cheap.

The highlight in Verona, of course, is Juliet’s balcony, and our tour guide filled us in on the background.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t as cut and dried as I had thought. I figured Shakespeare made it up, so they mirrored it in Verona for the tourists. While much of that is true, it does go a bit deeper. The story of Romeo and Juliet is an old one, written long ago and known throughout the region. Shakespeare heard it somehow and, as writers are wont to do, copied the idea, nearly verbatim. The names—Romeo, Juliet, Capulet, Montague—are all in the original story, and the plot is supposedly quite similar as well. However, none of it was real; it was just a story. That, of course, did not stop tourists—from as long as 200 years ago—from traveling to Verona and asking to see Juliet’s house. So, the town council said, “We need a house.”

Incredibly, the one they chose actually belonged to a Capulet, so it’s kinda authentic. Kinda. And it satisfied the tourists. For a while. The house was nice, but where was the balcony? So, the town council said, “We need a balcony,” and they found an old sarcophagus and fashioned a balcony out of it. And at some point, they made a statue of Juliet and put it in the garden, and at some other point, it became a tradition to grope her tit to bring you luck in love. Consequently, the Capulet’s garden was mobbed with people gazing up at a sarcophagus and/or groping the tit on Juliet’s statue. All in good fun, of course.

It was all a bunch of tourist nonsense, and the queue to get in was enormous, but of course we went. We were in Verona; we had to. And I am glad we did.

After that, we left for a less crowded part of town, visited the market, marvelled at the massive amphitheatre, and wandered the shopping district until it was time for a coffee and a slice of pie. But as it was lunch time, the cafés and restaurants were sure to be crowded, so we walked past countless cafés and restaurants with plenty of seating, happily serving coffee and cake to tourists, and ended up at a kiosk in the park where we got a paper cup of Americano and went to the expansive marble steps outside the opulent city hall—all covered in nice, cool shade—and sat in the sun.

Verona (along with Milan, Garda, Parma, and Venice) is a clean city, with lots of bins and council workers out emptying them, unlike in the UK where residents treat this green and pleasant land as if it’s their private landfill site. It’s nice to see. (Italy being clean, that is, not the UK being treated like a garbage dump.)

On the way back to Garda, we stopped for a wine tasting at an amazing vineyard. The wine was excellent, so I bought two bottles, hoping that, if we put one in each of our cases, the odds of getting at least one back home in one piece would double.

Weather-wise, the day had been lovely. Sunny, and not as scorching as the earlier part of the week, but just as the bus left the five of us off for our short walk to the hotel, the rain pounded down and, for the second time that week, my wife and I entered the lobby looking like drowned rats, this time with three other drowned rats following.

By the time dinner rolled around, however, the sun was back out, so we went to one of our favourite restaurants to celebrate the week with a final meal together.