Piazza Mercanti

This update encompasses 2 days for us. Yesterday was mostly travel with an overnight stop in Paris. We had to first get our cars back to Rouen from Caen. Last time we were taking the backroads, but this time it was all highways and toll booths. The speed limit on these French highways is 130 so we were just buzzing down the road. I am not sure what I prefer. Scenic drive but narrow winding roads and slower speeds... or blinding speeds, multiple lanes but so much traffic. Anyway, it was nice to experience both. And we managed to get our cars back with no accidents so that is a win.

We hadn't purchased our train tickets back to Paris yet as we were still trying to decide... do we go straight to Paris, or do we go to Giverny first. It was a tough decision but the stress of high speed highway driving and with the prospect of a long travel day the next day, we decided just to get to Paris. So we booked our tickets and we were off.

All in all it was a pretty uneventful day. I don't think I even took any pictures. We got to Paris, bought some metro tickets for the trip to our hotel as well as our trip the next day to the train station, and then headed over to our hotel. The room was great and spacious which was nice. We wish we could have stayed there longer. We found a place around the corner to eat and enjoyed a very nice, long lasting, unhurried meal on their outside patio. After that is was off to bed because we had to get up around 6 am in order to make sure we got to our 7:26 train to Milan.

The next day everything was going well. We arrived at the station really early, got some breakfast and some lunch for the ride, got on the train... and... sat there. A breakdown on the line had us delayed for well over an hour and a half. It wasn't bad though. We watched downloaded content on our phones and just waited it out. The train ride after that was beautiful but they put this wrap over the whole train to advertise stuff but it ruins some of the view. Oh well.

We arrived in Milan and it was hot. 35 degrees I believe. We checked in to our Hotel. Here, we had to settle for 2 rooms which ended up fine. We could do with a little time away from each other 😉.

Once settled we walked down from here to the Milan Duomo. It was about a 40 minute walk but hey.... it's Milan. After taking in the sights for a bit we were off to find food. In the end we walked all the way back to our hotel and found a place to eat across the street. Everyone enjoyed their Italian food and then we were off to our rooms to relax and have a great sleep.

Tomorrow we are off to La Spezia as our launching point to the Cinque Terre. Another travel day so we are looking forward to being able to settle a bit there. And the sights should be amazing. So off to bed. Chow Bella.Read more