14 October 2007
On the Eurostar, going from Bologna to Firenze. We’ve just come from Milan on a train on which we had to pay a reservation charge of eighteen euros. We were told about this when before we got on the train by the guards, and thought perhaps it only applied to first class, so we sat in second class, which was certainly comfortable enough anyway. But the charge applied to second class as well! Worse was to come: the guard on that train told us that we’d need to book on the train to Firenze, so we did - at a cost of thirty euros! This is because it’s the Eurostar apparently. We’re sitting in first class, not even with each other (across the aisle) and it’s not even particularly roomy. Hmm. Not that impressed with the Italian trains. The toilet on the previous one could only be described as grotty: you could see straight down through the toilet onto the tracks beneath! There didn’t seem to be anyway to flush anything (not that that mattered much since it was already dispersed along the line) and the tap wouldn’t work. The two compartments that should have been shut were both hanging open, and I couldn’t find anywhere to put the paper towel. Oh, dear. And we paid an extra eighteen euros for that.
Celia worked out this morning on one of her little machines how much I lost in NZ dollars when I had the wallet stolen. She claimed it was close to $500. Good grief. I’ll have to get a ‘man bag,’ as they’re nicknamed, so that I can keep all the bits close to me. Forgot to say that the pillows in Germany and Switzerland are virtually flat. And square rather than diagonal. Not sure how you’re supposed to use them; Celia folded hers up. Amazingly I’ve been sleeping comfortably on them without doing so. Maybe coming away is making me more flexible after all!
Showing posts with label milan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label milan. Show all posts
Monday, October 15, 2007
More on Milan
Amongst other things today we wandered down the Corso Buenos Aries, claimed by the Milanese to be the best shopping street in Europe. Well, by day, it looks like one of the more scruffy shopping streets to be honest, but by night (we were back in it tonight) it’s very sparkly and glitzy and certainly everybody and their brother was out. Along with a million cars.
We also went to the Duomo, a wondrous cathedral with its own Metro station and an immense Piazza, While we were there, we watched a Liturgy being conducted by a Cardinal - we think it might have been some sort of Harvest Festival equivalent, but can’t be sure. Anyway it was being relayed onto big screens around the immense church, while the voices of the speakers echoed and boomed. We couldn’t actually ‘attend’ it - they were keeping touristi out, but we watched it for some time, and, because we were handed a booklet with all the text in it, actually spoke along with the congregation - and sang. All in Italian, of course, at which we’re becoming very proficient. (As we did with German!)
Outside the church is a huge kind of 18th/19th century mall - a huge covered-in gallery with shops all down each side, and apartments up above. All of it in wonderful stone, with carvings and paintings. And as you come out the end of that, you run into one of the most famous opera houses in the world: La Scala. I’d completely forgotten it’s in Milan.
After some debate over how to get there - because Celia wanted to go on the buses in preference to the underground (not just because of yesterday’s incident, but to see more) - we found our way to the Castle. What a whopper! It puts most of the castles we’ve seen to shame, though it doesn’t have the antiquity of many of them. It’s as wide as it’s long, and though I would have thought it’s two or three hundred metres each side, Celia seems to think it’s only about one hundred. Not being able to get on the Net I can’t check. It has three moats because there are three walls, the second inside the first and so on. It’s thirty or forty feet high, and the tower at the front rises up way above that again. There are huge turrets on each corner. Inside it has cloister-like walls, and arched windows, and because it’s not made of the grey stone most other castles are made of, but rather a more reddish stone, it’s somehow more imposing. Very impressive, anyway.
By the time we finished with the Castello, it was getting on for half past five or nearly six. Celia wanted to go on a bus to find an area where there were restaurants, but we couldn’t in the end figure out which part of the loop the bus we’d caught to the Castello was on, and so we gave up and got on the Metro. We got out at Lima Station, which turned out to be back on the Corso Buenos Airies again. (We’d earlier found ourselves back on the street with the main police station in it while heading towards the Castello. It goes by the delightful name of Via Fatebenefrattelli.)
After we’d wandered up and down the Corso for nearly an hour we still hadn’t been able to find an actual restaurant. They were all bars, or pizza places. No spaghetti, no ravioli, no nothing - and no Asian or Indian restaurants either. Celia was getting exhausted by this time and proposed coming back to the hotel. We’d check on what was able at the Loreto Station area, and go from there. There was nothing. Not a thing. Even the McDonald’s was back down the Corso!
She couldn’t take walking around any more and we came back ‘home.’ And rustled up a perfectly good meal of wholemeal bread and cheese (she had the Gorgonzola, I had the Gruyere), apple, the remains of a salad we’d bought at lunchtime, and apricot jam. The bread and cheese we’d acquired during the course of the day, the former at an Arab bread shop, and the latter at Celia’s most favourite ‘museum.’ It’s a wonderful shop underground in the Loreto station. When we were in there today, around ten assistants were talking loudly to each other and the customers, and the customers talking loudly back, and there were cheeses galore, and all sorts of meats, and whole hams hanging up, and it all looked more like something out of the movies than real life. ‘My kind of shop,’ says Celia.
We also went to the Duomo, a wondrous cathedral with its own Metro station and an immense Piazza, While we were there, we watched a Liturgy being conducted by a Cardinal - we think it might have been some sort of Harvest Festival equivalent, but can’t be sure. Anyway it was being relayed onto big screens around the immense church, while the voices of the speakers echoed and boomed. We couldn’t actually ‘attend’ it - they were keeping touristi out, but we watched it for some time, and, because we were handed a booklet with all the text in it, actually spoke along with the congregation - and sang. All in Italian, of course, at which we’re becoming very proficient. (As we did with German!)
Outside the church is a huge kind of 18th/19th century mall - a huge covered-in gallery with shops all down each side, and apartments up above. All of it in wonderful stone, with carvings and paintings. And as you come out the end of that, you run into one of the most famous opera houses in the world: La Scala. I’d completely forgotten it’s in Milan.
After some debate over how to get there - because Celia wanted to go on the buses in preference to the underground (not just because of yesterday’s incident, but to see more) - we found our way to the Castle. What a whopper! It puts most of the castles we’ve seen to shame, though it doesn’t have the antiquity of many of them. It’s as wide as it’s long, and though I would have thought it’s two or three hundred metres each side, Celia seems to think it’s only about one hundred. Not being able to get on the Net I can’t check. It has three moats because there are three walls, the second inside the first and so on. It’s thirty or forty feet high, and the tower at the front rises up way above that again. There are huge turrets on each corner. Inside it has cloister-like walls, and arched windows, and because it’s not made of the grey stone most other castles are made of, but rather a more reddish stone, it’s somehow more imposing. Very impressive, anyway.
By the time we finished with the Castello, it was getting on for half past five or nearly six. Celia wanted to go on a bus to find an area where there were restaurants, but we couldn’t in the end figure out which part of the loop the bus we’d caught to the Castello was on, and so we gave up and got on the Metro. We got out at Lima Station, which turned out to be back on the Corso Buenos Airies again. (We’d earlier found ourselves back on the street with the main police station in it while heading towards the Castello. It goes by the delightful name of Via Fatebenefrattelli.)
After we’d wandered up and down the Corso for nearly an hour we still hadn’t been able to find an actual restaurant. They were all bars, or pizza places. No spaghetti, no ravioli, no nothing - and no Asian or Indian restaurants either. Celia was getting exhausted by this time and proposed coming back to the hotel. We’d check on what was able at the Loreto Station area, and go from there. There was nothing. Not a thing. Even the McDonald’s was back down the Corso!
She couldn’t take walking around any more and we came back ‘home.’ And rustled up a perfectly good meal of wholemeal bread and cheese (she had the Gorgonzola, I had the Gruyere), apple, the remains of a salad we’d bought at lunchtime, and apricot jam. The bread and cheese we’d acquired during the course of the day, the former at an Arab bread shop, and the latter at Celia’s most favourite ‘museum.’ It’s a wonderful shop underground in the Loreto station. When we were in there today, around ten assistants were talking loudly to each other and the customers, and the customers talking loudly back, and there were cheeses galore, and all sorts of meats, and whole hams hanging up, and it all looked more like something out of the movies than real life. ‘My kind of shop,’ says Celia.
The traveller’s worst nightmare
13th Oct, 2007
Well, maybe a worse nightmare would be to fall down the Spanish Steps and break your neck. Okay, this wasn’t as bad as that, but it certainly pained us considerably. We’d managed to find our way around the Metro here, and were starting to get confident. (Plus we managed a long ride on the 33 tram, which was a bit scary, but not impossible. Plus we didn’t pay, because we didn’t realise we were supposed to have a ticket before we got on.)
Anyway, about seven we got on at the Central Railway Station underground stop where there was a real crush, with people pushing and shoving to get in the door. That meant that everyone was bang up against everyone else as well, and we all travelled that way for the two stops that Celia and I were going. We got off the train at Loreto, and I suddenly realised there was a lightness in my left trouser pocket - the place I keep my wallet. Someone had nicked it, presumably during all the hustle. Consternation.
All sorts of thoughts of not being able to travel because we had no money came to mind, though in fact Celia had quite a bit of cash in her wallet (which she didn’t fail to remind me was around her waist and secure), and she still had her debit card and credit card. But I lost both my debit card and three credit cards, two of them from New Zealand, plus maybe a couple hundred euros, and my driver‘s licence.
We told the guard at the Metro exit, and he said we needed to go back to Polizei at another one of the stations (I’ve now forgotten which, but I think it was Duomo). So we did, feeling increasingly stressed, got there and found the police, who very helpfully pushed us onto the main police station near Turati Metro Station. And even though they gave us instructions how to find the Police station, it took us something like half an hour of wandering to track it down. People twice sent us in the wrong direction, which didn’t much help!Eventually we got there and while they weren’t offhand about it, they weren’t greatly concerned either. Which isn’t surprising, probably, as both they and we knew that’s unlikely we’ll see the wallet and its contents again.
Celia was feeling very low about it all, and even more, was concerned about our contacting the banks to stop the cards. And of course, I’d left my cellphone back at the hotel, so we couldn’t do anything about that until we got there. Finally we dragged ourselves home, very dispirited, and I eventually managed to get hold of someone in the UK about the HSBC cards. Fortunately that didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might, but I won’t have any cards of my own for the rest of the trip. Celia’s cards remain valid, which is a major relief, and certainly left us feeling better. Eventually.
Well, maybe a worse nightmare would be to fall down the Spanish Steps and break your neck. Okay, this wasn’t as bad as that, but it certainly pained us considerably. We’d managed to find our way around the Metro here, and were starting to get confident. (Plus we managed a long ride on the 33 tram, which was a bit scary, but not impossible. Plus we didn’t pay, because we didn’t realise we were supposed to have a ticket before we got on.)
Anyway, about seven we got on at the Central Railway Station underground stop where there was a real crush, with people pushing and shoving to get in the door. That meant that everyone was bang up against everyone else as well, and we all travelled that way for the two stops that Celia and I were going. We got off the train at Loreto, and I suddenly realised there was a lightness in my left trouser pocket - the place I keep my wallet. Someone had nicked it, presumably during all the hustle. Consternation.
All sorts of thoughts of not being able to travel because we had no money came to mind, though in fact Celia had quite a bit of cash in her wallet (which she didn’t fail to remind me was around her waist and secure), and she still had her debit card and credit card. But I lost both my debit card and three credit cards, two of them from New Zealand, plus maybe a couple hundred euros, and my driver‘s licence.
We told the guard at the Metro exit, and he said we needed to go back to Polizei at another one of the stations (I’ve now forgotten which, but I think it was Duomo). So we did, feeling increasingly stressed, got there and found the police, who very helpfully pushed us onto the main police station near Turati Metro Station. And even though they gave us instructions how to find the Police station, it took us something like half an hour of wandering to track it down. People twice sent us in the wrong direction, which didn’t much help!Eventually we got there and while they weren’t offhand about it, they weren’t greatly concerned either. Which isn’t surprising, probably, as both they and we knew that’s unlikely we’ll see the wallet and its contents again.
Celia was feeling very low about it all, and even more, was concerned about our contacting the banks to stop the cards. And of course, I’d left my cellphone back at the hotel, so we couldn’t do anything about that until we got there. Finally we dragged ourselves home, very dispirited, and I eventually managed to get hold of someone in the UK about the HSBC cards. Fortunately that didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might, but I won’t have any cards of my own for the rest of the trip. Celia’s cards remain valid, which is a major relief, and certainly left us feeling better. Eventually.
Phew! Found a way
12th Oct, 2007
If you’re reading this, you’ll know I’ve solved our problem with the mobile connect: it's done a bit of a runner, and won’t connect - so at present it’s mobile but nothing else. So the notes following are catch-up stuff.
I’m writing this on the train from Brig in Switzerland to Milano in Italy, where we’ve got a couple of nights booked. We had a major rest day yesterday: slept till at least ten (Celia quite a bit later) and then had another snooze in the afternoon. Read a lot, and had dinner with our hosts. Even managed to get a hold of their baby; we’re missing holding babies. Today is mostly a travel day. Celia had been a bit disappointed that we hadn’t stopped longer in Zurich, so we decided to travel back to Bern, by way of compensation, travel forward from there to Brig and then onto Milano. Bit of back-tracking, but the famous Eurail pass covers it all. Bern turned out to be a very grey city. Grey might not exactly describe the colour: it was kind of sandy stone colour, meaning it had a slight beach sand tint. But all the buildings in the old city were made of this, and they’re all solid and imposing. It’s like someone has said: we’ll build a city all in one colour, all in one dominant style and that’ll be it. This is the old town I’m talking of; across the bridge over a huge drop down to the river, there are many houses that are much traditionally Swiss - and to our eyes, much pleasant.
Anyway, we ‘did’ Bern, and hopped back on the train after about an hour and a half. That took us back along the line past Thun and Spiez, and then it veered off somewhere, and we climbed and climbed until we were so far above the valley, the cars looked like insects crawling along. Why they built the train up on the side of the mountains I‘m not sure. You‘d have thought they‘d have built it in the valley, since most of the towns are down there. Still, the views are spectacular - when they‘re not interrupted by one of the innumerable tunnels. Huge mountains, caverns, raging torrents, waterfalls, snow on the highest peaks - you name it! This is certainly a marvellous piece of countryside, though it might be a bit difficult of access! And now we‘re heading through more of the same, so I‘m going to stop typing.
If you’re reading this, you’ll know I’ve solved our problem with the mobile connect: it's done a bit of a runner, and won’t connect - so at present it’s mobile but nothing else. So the notes following are catch-up stuff.
I’m writing this on the train from Brig in Switzerland to Milano in Italy, where we’ve got a couple of nights booked. We had a major rest day yesterday: slept till at least ten (Celia quite a bit later) and then had another snooze in the afternoon. Read a lot, and had dinner with our hosts. Even managed to get a hold of their baby; we’re missing holding babies. Today is mostly a travel day. Celia had been a bit disappointed that we hadn’t stopped longer in Zurich, so we decided to travel back to Bern, by way of compensation, travel forward from there to Brig and then onto Milano. Bit of back-tracking, but the famous Eurail pass covers it all. Bern turned out to be a very grey city. Grey might not exactly describe the colour: it was kind of sandy stone colour, meaning it had a slight beach sand tint. But all the buildings in the old city were made of this, and they’re all solid and imposing. It’s like someone has said: we’ll build a city all in one colour, all in one dominant style and that’ll be it. This is the old town I’m talking of; across the bridge over a huge drop down to the river, there are many houses that are much traditionally Swiss - and to our eyes, much pleasant.
Anyway, we ‘did’ Bern, and hopped back on the train after about an hour and a half. That took us back along the line past Thun and Spiez, and then it veered off somewhere, and we climbed and climbed until we were so far above the valley, the cars looked like insects crawling along. Why they built the train up on the side of the mountains I‘m not sure. You‘d have thought they‘d have built it in the valley, since most of the towns are down there. Still, the views are spectacular - when they‘re not interrupted by one of the innumerable tunnels. Huge mountains, caverns, raging torrents, waterfalls, snow on the highest peaks - you name it! This is certainly a marvellous piece of countryside, though it might be a bit difficult of access! And now we‘re heading through more of the same, so I‘m going to stop typing.
Travel writing in abeyance
Sadly, I can't get online to upload my notes about the trip at the moment. As I've explained in an email to some people, the mobile connect has gone AWOL - we've tried all sorts of things, like uninstalling it and so forth, but it's just not wanting to work. This means I'm having to rely on Internet cafes\shops, and though they're not expensive, it's not so easy to get things uploaded.
We went to the Vodafone shop in Corso Buenos Aires yesterday, but the young man in there refused point blank to help us. He belongs to Vodafone Europe - we belong to Vodafone UK. And trying to ring Vodafone UK from here doesn't work at all. We get a lovely Italian lady telling us something at great length, and then the usual English woman saying we appear to have dialled a number that doesn't exist.
Anyway, I've written up lots of notes and have them on my computer. If we have time I'll come in and put them on here. If not, know that we are still doing things! (In Florence, at present.)
PS Everything on Google is in Italian. Makes a change from German.
We went to the Vodafone shop in Corso Buenos Aires yesterday, but the young man in there refused point blank to help us. He belongs to Vodafone Europe - we belong to Vodafone UK. And trying to ring Vodafone UK from here doesn't work at all. We get a lovely Italian lady telling us something at great length, and then the usual English woman saying we appear to have dialled a number that doesn't exist.
Anyway, I've written up lots of notes and have them on my computer. If we have time I'll come in and put them on here. If not, know that we are still doing things! (In Florence, at present.)
PS Everything on Google is in Italian. Makes a change from German.
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