Warning- this will probably be the longest post I will ever write.... I might have to make it more than one post.
Hope you enjoy it. :P
Ok, so this past week John and I took our first road trip together. We explored Italy and a little bit of Switzerland. Of course one week is not nearly enough time but we gave it all we had. :) Also- we couch surfed for the very first time. Couch surfing is when people host you in their homes and give you a free place to sleep and sometimes even give you meals.
Friday night/Saturday morning (October 30th / October 31st) we started our journey by getting on the 1 am bus to Madrid. The ride there is 6 hours and there was not much legroom (remember John is quite tall)- so you can only imagine the kind of sleep we experienced. We arrived at the bus station early in the morning, took the Metro to Barajas Airport in Madrid, printed off our boarding passes, went through the most unorganized security line, then found our gate with time to spare!
We arrived in Milan around noon??? I am not sure but I remember it was earlier on in the day. John and I explored the city and went to the places Mateo (our host in Milan) told us to go to. We walked through the Fashion center (street where all the famous designers have their shops) and witnessed some of the most ridiculous price tags ever! John almost had a heart attack when he saw that a Versace fur coat was 52,000 Euros A.K.A 76,000 US Dollars!!!
Later we went to the Milan Cathedral and since we were told the view from the top of the Cathedral was a must see, we walked up a whole lot of narrow stairs with our backpacks on (they were at their heaviest at this point in time). When we finally made it to the top it was clear that the agonizing climb was more than worth it! The view was breath taking, the architecture was impressive and it made for some sweet pictures.
We then realized we did not have the address to get to our hosts home which meant we needed to find an Internet Café or “Internet Point” as the Europeans call them nowadays. After finding one we took the metro to a suburb of Milan and found our way to Mateo and Ane’s home. They were lovely people and very welcoming. Mateo knows three languages and understands a fourth language and Ane is fluent in five languages! They are my language heroes.
They decided to make us a traditional Italian dinner that was not Pizza or Pasta- instead they fed us rabbit (Yes, I am talking about a bunny), polenta (a corn dough substance- typical of Northern Italy), mushrooms (gross), bread (Yum!) and Gelato (Gelato simply means Ice Cream in Italian). Overall the meal was amazing (I ate all except the mushrooms) and it was also free which makes it ever more amazing.
The following morning we took a train back to the airport and picked up our amazing little car (A white, four-door Citroen)! After struggling to get Lola working (Lola= GPS) we made our way to Zurich, Switzerland.
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