Italy (Milan, Lake Garda, Venice)

We arrived in Milan and I convinced Cannelle that it was definitely worth visiting the city to see the cathedral before we headed to the lakes. It would be a crime to be so close and not see it, as I still believe its one of the best buildings in Europe. We walked into the centre and went up on the roof. Its still one of the few places you can walk on the roof. The building is awesome and Cannelle says it looks like its made from some sort of silken gauze material (I can't remember exactly which one it was). They were doing night concerts there and it was a shame that we would miss it because we had to be at the lakes. We were going to couchsurf and we had intended to couchsurf a lot on the holiday (In the end it never quite worked out like that). Milan is a super classy city, one of those which is probably better to live in than visit. The shopping centre is cool and the dress sense is what you would expect from a fashion capital. Cannelle though the 'underground' was a Mcdonalds due to the 'M' metro symbol and has to rank along with the classic in Valencia of 'where is the cathedral?', while we were standing on the cathedral roof :-)

Following our brief tour we went to buy tickets for the lakes. An Italian man stopped us and showed us that the machine we were about to use was not giving any change. Nice guy and very helpful of the Italians in general. Cannelle had had bad experiences in the South on a work trip and liked Italy a lot better this time. We still need to see Florence, Rome and Siena together. After his help we headed out for Cannelle's first CS experience. We met our Polish host at the station and she made us lovely parma ham with melon before taking us on an evening tour of Sirmione. I pretended I hadn't been here before as I figured it was politer. All of the Italian leg were places I had been before, but I wanted to show Cannelle Venice and I had always wanted to visit the most beautiful city in the World with a partner (so who better than my future wife). I have written 'old man with three seats' and 'pink shorts/blazer' man. I have no idea what I was writing about and its things like this, which is why I will return to the live blogging format for the Asia trip.

When we wokeup both Kasia and Davide had gone to work and we had the day to ourselves. We went to Migros (A supermarket we always went to in Switzerland when I was a kid) and bought ourselves a picnic. Being constantly ravenously hungry I had to eat early and we had breakfast while feeding the friendly/aggressive ducks. Delete as appropriate depending on your love of animals. They were certainly confident ducks. We found a mini golf. Its an important tradition as readers of this blog will know, from the original days of playing in Pennsylvania with Ollie. I believe the second post of the blog has a reference to it. There was even a weird gemini twin hole. We played it twice as we thought it was two separate holes, as oppose to two separate ones of the same to speed up game time. The weather was scorching and we were lucky for our start. We headed out to the recommended Jamaica beach to spend the afternoon. Cannelle can find the cold (well by Caribbean standards) water refreshing in the heat. I just find it cold. It could be 60 degrees outside and I still wouldn't want a cold water shower. Only the Amazon boat drop buckets come close to proving that wrong. I cut my toe out in the water as I got it stuck on the rocks. Lake Garda is a nice place to kick back and relax. The European Mediterranean summer was going to be a nice one (We didn't see much rain until we hit the Czech Rep and Poland). We found some Roman ruins but didn't want to pay to go in and we saw plenty of fat red lobster women around the beaches. There are a lot of Italian tourists around the lake. We came back and had a wonderful risotto. We then rounded out the weekend with a game of risk. I had the objective to kill Cannelle's pinks and noone could work out what I needed as I kept switching directions, but of course it depended where her men were. In the end I won by conquering the whole World as Cannelle's were the last men standing. Was fun. There was also a murder in town where a local restaurant owner (and someone they knew) shot his chef dead over some money dispute. It was treated quite calmly and I suppose is more of a normal occurence in Italy. Our hosts told us there is a lot of Sicilian influence around the lakes. Fair enough. We were happy to be communicating by using our Spanish here as everyone understood us and we understood almost everything they said. Ah the bliss compared to what was to come.

I have no idea what I have written now. In the end I paid extra for the train to Venice. Not sure why. I must have fucked up somewhere. The trains were full as people moved around the lake but cleared out for the last leg. Ah that was it. I bought a ticket to Venice central, when we were only going to the Venice mainland stop. We got to our random 4 star hotel that we had found on the mystery hotel offer on lastminute. It was really nice and a cool place to stay for our anniversary. We headed out into Venice and its still a very beautiful city. Cannelle liked it, but secretly I suspect she was expecting more. My fault for bigging it up. We walked around the back streets through the Rialto, stopping down a back alley for a famed stone baked pizza (It was superb and had been recommended to avoid tourist hotspots with mediocre food and prices that suggested delusions of grandeur). We had the sausage and wild mushroom. It was heavenly. We got lost a bit (normal), visited San Marco, found a statue with a stone penis (for Cannelle), saw some random art, climbed the tower for the beautiful views (where we met a very lovely Yankee couple we gave advice to for Barcelona) and chilled out in a park. It was crawling with tourists as it was on both my pervious visits, but its still a very unique place. I whacked my head three times on the shower here. You'd figure I would have learnt after the first time or even the second. We went to a lovely trattoria seafood restaurant that doesn't really welcome tourists, but that's part of the appeal. Its fiendishly hard to find, even with a map, but it was worth it as we had an exceptional meal and Cannelle got to continue her new love affair with fish. We didn't pay for the bus either way from the mainland to Venice and I wouldn't bother if I were you. We had a wonderful anniversary evening and could lie in the next day as we were going to cruise into Slovenia. It almost cost us, but we ended up with exceptional luck on our connections etc.

We had a wonderful buffet breakfast and ended up walking up the stairs as we were too heavy for the lift. It was a good breakfast. We took the train to the border town of Gorizia as it was the cheapest way to cross. On the train one couple had to pay extra and one woman was fined 40 euros for not stamping her ticket. The guard argued it was the same system in Holland (She was Dutch) which is not true, but I wouldn't have known either except that Cannelle is used to the system in France. I suppose they have to do it as they don't really have barriers. We got off the train and Cannelle reckoned there was a bus direct to Slovenian Gorizia. I didn't think so (there was) and we took a bus to the border. We asked the driver how to get across the border and he seemed stressed until we told him we understand Italian and he rattled off the instructions. Easy enough. Everyone in Italy was super happy and we walked across the border (It was Cannelle's first time walking a border and it wouldn't be her last). Onwards to Slovenia.