Milan, Italy - July 17

32 degrees

Well, we just received confirmation that Israel has officially been pulled from our cruise itinerary. While hardly a surprise, we are a bit disappointed. We’re not totally crushed as we’ve been there before and it is a big commitment getting from the coast to Jerusalem, but our 3 days in Israel was going to be a pretty big highlight of the cruise. Considering what the people living there are going through this is hardly even worth mentioning.

Today our goal was to get train tickets for our journey to Venice on Saturday. The station is about 3 km away so that was a healthy walk. Half way there was a small park we stopped in for a refreshment. I’ve noticed a lot of people jog here – not much different from home I guess and that locals take lunch later than we would – more like 1:00.

On our way back we found ourselves on a narrow windy (I suppose a lot of them wind) street that was almost an alley – a high fashion alley. On either side were high-end shops – Dolce and Gabbana, Tiffany, Prada etc. Struck me as funny on this tiny little street, I did my best to pry Chris away before he was albe to do too much damage!!

Milan cityscape

Lunch was...wait for it…wine, bruschetta and pizza. We are sure to order water each time we sit down as we are sweating just a bit. Much to my delight I was able to find a seat in the loo – luxury.

Duomo

The highlight of my evening was finding a piggly- wiggly!!!!!  Typically on vacation we happen upon multiple convenience/grocery stores where we buy water, beer, wine, snacks etc and check out the local sundries. Milan was not offering up this usual find. We googled, asked, searched and NOTHING. Finally tonight we found one – I was in heaven. Firstly…it had AC, not the half assed AC some places have, but hard core, grocery store blasting, chill you until you beg for mercy, but for god’s sake don’t AC. On top of the North-Pole atmosphere, it had Granna Padano cheese by the giant hunk for what this Canadian thinks is next-to-nothing. I don’t typically buy these cheeses in these large quantities, but from what I remember at home this price would buy me a small piece.

20.00 worth of cheese

Our goal for the evening was to visit the Navigilio which is a hip, happening place for mostly locals. Here patrons spilled out onto the street drinking, eating and socializing. These places aren’t ‘off-limits’ for kids and there were plenty of them playing while the adults socialized. The places were so busy we walked around for a bit before we actually sat for dinner. We had risotto, lasagne, bresaola (salad of dried meet, arugula and parmesan cheese) and a fizzy red wine. I didn’t know fizzy red wine was such the thing until we hit the grocery store and saw many ‘Frizzante’ red wines – I can’t say it was my favourite.

Navigilio

One thing we’ve noticed here is the preponderance of mosquitos in the evenings. In our experience there aren’t many at all in big cities, but Milan is unique in this respect. Tonight there were actually old-school mosquito coils where we were eating – won’t know until tomorrow if we fell victim.

mosquito coil