My Birthday Trip to Milan and Rome

Reamer and I went to the train station on Friday without any idea of where we were going to go to celebrate my Birthday. We packed one change of clothes, toothbrushes, and only a few other essentials in Reamers backpack and in my huge purse. We went to the self service ticket machine and starting typing in destinations to see the price/time/and length of train ride. We finally decided to go to Milan and we would tour that and try to go somewhere else from there. There would be trains going everywhre from that train station.

We arrived in Milan and were so excited to see the city. We spent the entire day on our feet walking around the entire city. Milan was as glamorous as you would think. High end designer stores where on every corner. As we entered the main part of Milan, we walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. It is a beautiful open yet indoor shopping center with designer shops adorning the mall. Prada, Gucci, Louis Vouitton, and of course McDonalds are all represented in the beautiful shopping center.



Milan's giant cathedral, Duomo, is one of the most beautiful structures that I have ever seen. It reminds me of the amazing drip sand castles that my mother used to make with us at the beach. Inside the church the stained glass windows take your breath away. The vastness of the church is mindblowing and all that you can do is stare in awe at its pure beauty.




Milan also is home to the Castello Storzesco. The castle is has several beautiful courtyards and is surrounded by parks. The nature that surrounds the castle adds to its beauty and charm. We also saw the famous Teatro alla Scala which is one of the world's most prestigious opera houses.

We toured the town, shopped, ate delicous food and after we had done everything that we wanted, we decided to go back to the train station to see if we could take an overnight train to a new location. Possibly Paris, or the beach somewhere....(who knows?). After scouring the destinations and the cost of last minute sleeping trains (they have trains where you can purchase a bed instead of a seat) we decided to go to Rome. We purchased our ticket for the midnight ride and we would arrive early in the morning. But we would have about 5 hours to sleep on the train. We waited for our train to come and saw that it had a delay, so we patiently waited... Finally, I looked up at the screen again and realized that we were looking at arrivals, not departures. OUR TRAIN HAD ALREADY LEFT WITHOUT US!!! We went to customer service so that we wouldn't completely loose our money and they changed our ticket to 6 a.m. That meant that we had to WAIT UNTIL 6 a.m. TO LEAVE!!!

So, with our tired and blistered feet, we toured the town again. We rested at the Duemo (the beautiful catherdral). We put our feet in the fountains. Observed georgous models in their farrari's going out for a glamourous night on the town. And we went back to the train station exhausted for our journey to Rome. We tried as best we could to sleep on the train, but because we had been bumped onto the new train, we had no assigned seats. We continuously got moved from seat to seat until finally we sat in the cafe car(it is sort of like a restraunt seating train car).

Finally, we made it to Rome and we didn't even care about our lack of sleep. We just wanted to see this amazing city! I will write about Rome in my next blog!