Thank God I set my alarm before going to sleep last night, because Mom slept through hers. I got up at 6:30 and got her up, too. We quickly got ready and packed up the rest of our stuff, then headed downstairs.
Alex and Morgana were both already awake, showered and fresh looking while the two of us looked like a bomb woke us up and we were still in shock from it.. haha. They had already taken the puppy out and everything. I never even heard them! I said my byes to my new furry best friends (Odin was playing hard to get, so he didn’t get kisses from me.. I did get to scratch his handsome little head though).
Alex drove us to the local train station and to our delight, they both walked us in! He navigated the local ticket purchasing for us and took us to our platform 🙂 These French trains give me anxiety. I better get the hell over that though, because Mom and I are traveling exclusively by train for the next 4 weeks!
We hugged and said our goodbyes. I’m still just so thankful to these two for all of their generosity. Morgana and I haven’t physically seen each other in years, potentially since college-unless there was a once off here or there.. and yet she welcomes me and my Mom into her home and showered us with so much kindness. It just felt easy.. no awkwardness or tension. I’m already missing them both!
We made our local train, got to the main train station and found us some breakfast- and then promptly hunted down the departures screen and stared at it for the next 20 or so minutes.. until it gave us a platform for our train to Milan. It worked just as Alex said it would. Ok, maybe i am starting to get the hang of these bad boys.
We lug our stuff on the train and get comfortable.. we have 5+ hours in those seats. Mom napped, I couldn’t-so I read. Another Colleen Hoover book. When my eyes start to cross, I try to sleep again-no dice. So, I get on the WiFi and play on social media, upload pictures and the last few days of the blog.
With about 30 minutes to go, and after 2 bathroom trips and a food car excursion (any reason to walk around), the lady across from me completely transforms herself. She was just a regular woman in her late 50s early 60s.. then, she pulled her hair down and fixed it, put on makeup, looked stunning and started talking to us.. hahaha she hadn’t said a peep for 5 hours, and now we couldn’t get her to shut up if we tried! Luckily, she was funny and wanting to practice her English.
She told us places to go, theaters to see, where she bought her makeup eyeshadow sticks and where a store is (in the train station). We learned all about her life, she’s a theatre performer and was coming back to Milan after singing in Paris. She’s a busy girl, telling us about her flights here and her trains there.. almost daily! And I thought our trip was jam packed!
We made it into Milan.. we left the train and walked toward the metro, until we saw that makeup store and promptly halted our travels to go find some pretty new goodies. With new stuff in tow, we eventually did make it to the metro station and got our tickets, found our subway and got on it. When we got off-we were just a short walk to our hotel. It was raining but we didn’t care!
We checked in and our room was ready, so we went to unload our stuff. The room is gorgeous! Our twin beds make me cackle, they always have them shoved together.. if we wanted to sleep that close we’d just get the queen sized bed and share! Lol The bathroom is spacious and has a feel of luxury to it. It’s perfect!
We were pretty worn out from traveling, and hungry.. plus we had a ton of dirty clothes that we needed to wash, so we got the dirty clothes in a bag, put on running shorts and rain jackets, and headed out into the mist to walk a mile to a laundromat. The services at the hotel would be astronomical and the lady told us that they have the weekends off and aren’t taking anymore clothes today-so that wasn’t an option.
We got some entertaining stares as we walked with our bags in the rain. Italians are known for being well dressed always, and here we were walking around in running shorts in the rain in 60 degree weather! Haha, I got a good giggle out of it. I told Mom that we couldn’t go into a restaurant dressed like we were because they probably wouldn’t serve us. The first tiny place we tried to eat at didn’t really go so well, we were having a language barrier for certain, plus he was looking at us and shaking his head.. so, we continued on..
The next place was nothing like that one. The man was patient, able to speak some English and didn’t mind my choppy attempts at Italian (Duolingo helps some, but not nearly enough). We ordered a slice of pizza each and a glass of wine each. White for Mom, red for me.. and the man was a bit flirty with mom, too. Exactly how you’d expect a 50s handsome Italian man to be. He had no idea he was making my Italian dreams for Mom come true!
While we were eating, he came over with something that looked like a calzone sort of.. and said it was too good for us to not have, all while smiling intently at Mom. Now my dreams really were coming true-he’s flirting with Mom and I get extra food out of it! Heck yeah! Hahaha (I’m going to regret all this extra food when we put on bathing suits in a couple weeks!)
After we finish up, we walk the rest of the way to the laundromat. It’s a small one, 4 washers and 2 dryers. One man is in there already, so we wait for a washer to open up. We end up doing 3 loads of laundry! (Mom actually separates her clothes, I throw it all in and say it is what it is.. ha So, we sit and scroll the internet and i chat with my friend Meredith (she’s always an early riser, I’m really loving that with this time difference thing!).
When we finish folding and putting our clean clothes back in our bags, we start the walk back in the rain. After seeing and hearing the way these drivers are, I’m glad we didn’t rent a car. In the 15 minutes it took us to get home, we saw a car knock off the mirror of another car, we heard a cacophony of horns blaring almost the entire time, and watched several cop cars and ambulances fly by while other cars popped up on the sidewalks to get out of their way! Sheesh!
Back at the room, we decided we were too tired to change clothes and venture out into the rain again. So, we enjoyed the new room.. laid on our beds and watched TV. Somehow Mom was able to get one of the channels to swap into English. Alright, How I Met Your Mother marathon it is! Too bad it wasn’t SVU.
It was some time during this marathon that I awkwardly ran my mile in the room. I was able to make an ‘L’ shape to run in and set my watch to treadmill mode-it worked and I guess went off my arm swing and heart rate, because it said it took me 11 minutes to do a mile, which felt accurate in that environment. I had asked the concierge if they had a gym and he laughed a little while shaking his head-damn Americans.
We eventually ordered room service (because why not), and I’m here to tell you I enjoyed every bite of whatever i ordered. It was some kind of bread with a “mountain cheese” and ham on it.. not quite pizza, not quite bruschetta, but all the way good! I do wish they did have an actual gym here, because I need it! The only real workout I’m getting seems to be my stomach, and not in a good way!
It wasn’t too long after inhaling all of that yummy food and wine that I was fast asleep.. and a good sleep it was, too.