25th Anniversary - Day 2 - Milan to Venice (April 30, 2015)

We flew for 8 hours and had a 6 hour time change so we got to Milan, Italy at 11am. We were a little tired but it was all good. We were in Italy and we were ready for anything. At the airport we had to figure out how to get to the train station so that we could get to the city. We also had no Euros so we had figure out how to do that. And all in Italian! We found our way and finally made our way to the train station where we got on a high speed train ride into Milan. Once we got to Milano Centrale we had to make our way to a visitor's center where our tour of Milan was to begin. We also had to find the place to store our luggage so that we didn't have to take it with us. When we got out of the train this is what we found :0 We looked for the signs that said "Deposito Bagagli" but we still went back and forth trying to find it.

Finally we found it!

It felt as if we were on the Amazing Race trying to figure out what to do. Our next task was to make our way to the visitor's center. We figured out how to use the metro to get us there. 

Finally once there we had a little bit of time to eat before our tour. We found a place to eat and we had our first of many paninis.

The Milan Expo 2015 was opening on May 1 and we got to see the entrance.

We met our tour and drove around to see a few landmakrs of Milan.

Our first stop was the Milan Opera House "La Scala" It was beautiful! 

This was our tour guide. All of the tour guides have a pole so that those in the tour can see where they are at. We all had earphones so she didn't have to yell and we could all hear her. 

Next stop the fashion capital of the world "Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II"

When you come out from the galleria you come out straight to the Duomo de Milano. 

Look at that detail... (I'm sure Casey said that!)

The inside of the Duomo de Milano.

Our next stop was this Sforza Castle. 

Someone asked me if I wanted a bracelet and I said no but he told me that it was a gift and started putting it on me. When Casey came they started asking for money. Aghh we didn't know better. So we gave them money. What else were we to do?

We then went to see Leonardo DaVinci's Last Supper painting. Part of the reason why we decided to go on this tour was because we wanted to see this painting and all of the tickets were sold out unless you went on a tour. Pictures are not allowed inside because the painting is on a wall and they are trying to preserve it as much as possible. So this is a picture I found on google. People are only allowed inside for 30 minutes.

After viewing the last supper we had to get back to Milano Centrale to get on a train to go to Venice (Venezia). We made it back there, picked up our luggage, and then we just had to figure out what train to get on. It didn't say on our tickets. There were thousands of people there and our departure time was getting close. We finally asked some police officers and they tried to explain in the little English that they spoke how to look on the monitor for our train number. We were on one end of the train station and our train was way on the other side. How were we ever going to get get there through all those people with our luggage. Aghhh. Stress again!!!

This is a sample of what it looked like...

There were like 34 platforms that we could choose from.

We finally got close to our train and there are all these people running to get on the train. We thought they were running cause they knew the train was leaving any minute. We had a number on our ticket but all of the train cars said #2???? We were worried so we got on a random car not knowing what number it was cause we were worried the train would leave without us. Once we were on we found out where we were supposed to be and we moved through a bunch of different cars through a bunch of people to get to ours. We finally got to our seats and someone was sitting there??? On geezz now what? They understood what we were asking and they moved. By now we are sweating and exhausted but relieved that we were finally on. 

The train ride was supposed to be about 2hrs and 15min. But there were problems along the way and kept stopping. Who knows why cause we didn't know what they were saying. We finally made it to Venice about 2 hours late. We were supposed to be there at 9:45pm but finally got there at 11:35pm. We then had to go get the keys so we could get to our flat. We walked like 10 minutes to the office then about 15 minutes to our flat (well it was supposed to be 15 minutes except we got lost!) So we were finally in our room at about 11:45pm. After 2 nights of sleeping on planes and being jet lagged with no dinner... we were pretty tired.

We needed some food and while we were walking things were oppened but by the time we came out again. Everything had closed. Apparently they close at midnight. So all we could have was gelato for dinner. Then we went back to our room and just crashed.

This is what Venice looked like to us when we got there. It was very quiet and peaceful.

Distance walked today 6.5 miles or 15,452 steps.