Milano

Today we spent the morning negotiating our way through the crazy traffic of Milano to try and see the sights before driving north to Lago di Como.

It rained.  It rained and rained.  It rained incredibly heavily and then it rained some more.  We got wet.  And it continued to rain.  The Duomo is extremely impressive, both on the inside and out.  La Scala theater was less impressive, but then we didn't go inside it.

Natalie, Dad, and Mum, outside the Duomo in Milano.  With a lot of pigeons.

i enjoyed the world's most expensive pizza while the rest of my party enjoyed the company of the world's grumpiest waiter.  Actually that's not fair, he was extremely happy once i'd got my wallet out.  Here's a tip Nasty Waiter-Dude, get out of the service industry.

My extremely poor navigation ended us up driving in the opposite direction on the A4, the world's most hideous road.  With any luck, we won't have to go anywhere near that road again.  We've plotted a route through Ticino and Valais in Svizzera which means that for the remainder of our road trip we'll be mostly driving north and west from now on.

Anyway, the towns around the Italian Lakes are actually quite large and the roads inversely proportionally small and tricky.  Consequently it took us a lot longer than we thought to get to Lenno, where i'm now sitting having repaired the light bulbs in the bathroom and hooked up their AV system properly.  We've forked over a huge amount of cash and a hefty deposit to be in this apartment.  i'm hoping we get it back.  So far our hosts seem rather disorganized.

However, the apartment is as described and is very tastefully decorated and pretty close to the lake.  Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow.  We've driven more than a thousand miles in the last week and spent more than 26 hours in the car, so tomorrow, whatever we do, i hope it doesn't involve playing dodgems with the Crazy Italians again.