Milan

We have had a whirlwind 2 days in Milan having flown from Sarajevo to Milan on Ryanair. I was quite impressed with flying on Ryan air. No luxuries but very efficient. I had also paid up front for 1 checked luggage, 1 carry on and seat selection. It didn't cost that much more and then we weren't in the situation where if you show up and your carry on luggage doesn't fit you are being nailed with higher fees. Out of curiosity Andrew checked our carry on before we checked it and it was slightly too large. The flight went seamlessly and we were on the ground 1.5 hours later. Now what was crazy was we ended up standing in line for 1.5hours to clear custom s as non EU residents. Heaven forbid what would have happened if I had been old and frail. Early in the trip if you have been following my blog I jumped across the Slovenian Italian border multiple times without anyone knowing or carrying of course both these countries are in the Schengen zone/ EU so you can pass freely between them.

We chilled out for the afternoon after getting to the Air BnB. It is unseasonably warm this week with temperatures of between 30 and 35. On the first evening we ventured out and walked to the centre of Milan where the large Duomo cathedral is located. They were having a concert for teenagers so the square was just packed. We walked around the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle. This is a beautiful high end shopping mall right beside the Duomo which was built in the 19th century and has an impressive roof made from glass and metal. We walked around checking out all of the high end stores like Prada, Louis Vuitton, Rolex etc. Behind the galleria is the Scala, the famous opera house which we also took in. Andrew had more energy than I did so I hopped on the metro and he kept walking around downtown Milan and eventually ran home.

Having had a pretty sedentary Friday we decided on Saturday to rent some bikes. I ran into a snag booking the municipal bikes as one needed a functioning cellphone number. I should have set up the app in Canada before the trip. Fortunately we found a nearby bike rental shop and rented 2 bikes for the day. The bike lanes are pretty well set up here and we cycled around for about 3 hours including a loop of downtown Milan with 2 bakery breaks.

As we had limited time we chose to do one art gallery, the Ambrosiana. Known for having a large collection of Leonardo Davinci drawings and Raphael sketches. It's tough to do justice to a gallery in an hour but we tried to look at everything including documents signed by Galileo and Napoleon and the gloves Napoleon had worn at the battle of Waterloo and the Leonardo Davinci documents with the backwards writing for which Leonardo was known.

At Andrew's insistence we then went to the Leonardo Davinci science and technology museum. It was huge covering all of mankind's technological developments. One could have spent weeks in the museum as it seemed cover pretty well all of mankind's advance from steel manufacturing to aerospaceto nautical to computers. Andrew the engineer seemed quite impressed by the exhibits.

We were pretty well all played out so we cycled in the 30 + degree heat back to the bike shop and our Air BnB. There was a highly rated Indian food restaurant across the street so we did Indian food for supper. It was very good

This morning we took a high speed train to Bologna. The train was very fast moving at 300 kmph. The trip took only 1 hour and 20 minutes. We then hopped on a monrail from the train station to the airport where we picked up our car and drove to Modena where we spend the next 3 days visiting high end car factories and some foodie sights.Read more