Milan, Italy

It goes on like this for 40km!! So Beautiful!

We found a small pathway and thought we would see where it took us. It ended up on a little dock on the lake. 

This is how all the shops are in Bellagio. In between stair walkways and such. Really old and cute.

The White House in the Center is George Clooney's on Lake Como

The Beginning of Lake Como

A Really Old Amphitheater that had Chairs Embedded in the Cement.

The Courtyard of the Castle 

One of the Decorated Coke Bottles. I thought this picture was funny :)

Covered Mall with Prada and Louis Vuitton

Other Friends From the Group

Quite the Picture. It actually stayed on me for a long time. It let me walk with it. I probably have Bird Flu now, but whatever!

Birds Everywhere!!

In Front of the Duomo

So for our 2^nd traveling weekend we decided to go to Milan, Italy. It was basically the same group of people except for 2 people switched out for 2 different ones. 8 of us caught the 7:20am train out of Lausanne and headed straight for Milan. It was nice not having to make any train changes on the way. It was only about a 3.5 hour train ride to Milan from Lausanne, much nicer than the 7.5 hour train ride to Nice the previous weekend. I was not in charge of booking the hostel for this trip, and now I know that I should probably always handle the hostel bookings. We showed up to a hostel that was not near the center of town so it was a pretty far walk from everything we wanted to do, it smelled of bad Asian food, and was really janky. One of our rooms had only a bidet in the room, and it was literally IN the room. The toilet was in the same area as the beds with no door, very awkward. Needless to say, the people in that room used our bathroom.

It was fashion week in Milan the weekend before we went, so the city was still decorated a little bit from fashion week. There were large coke bottles everywhere that were decorated differently as an ode to fashion. We spent Friday at the Duomo (the cathedral) and walking around the shops and trying to find our way around downtown. Milan is known for its designer labels and name brand stores. Needless say, we didn’t do much buying, just window-shopping. The Prada store is based in Milan so we got to visit that which was pretty cool but intimidating. We visited a castle the same day and walked through a really cute park in the middle of town. At the end of the day we found a pizzeria that was really cheap but had the best thin crust pizza ever! We super excited to find it.

On Saturday, Alex and I decided to break off from the group and take our own day trip to Lake Como. We found our way to the train station and bought a ticket on our own (I was very proud of us, this is quite a daunting task when everything is in another language). It was about a 40 minute ride from Milan to Lake Como and well worth it. It was one the prettiest lakes I’ve ever seen. When we got off at the train station we met these 3 older couples traveling together who were form Austrailia. They all had been away from home for close to a month and were starting to miss their kids and grandbabies so they insisted that we tag along with them. They got us on a ferry boat and we rode for two hours around the lake and ended up at a small town called Bellagio. It was absolutely adorable and beautiful at the same time. Bellagio is known for their silk and cashmere so there was plenty of shopping to be done there. Lake Como ended up taking up our whole day and we got back at around 9pm (after ending up at the wrong train station and having to find our way back on the metro).

Sunday morning was basically the same as Friday. We ate breakfast and sipped cappuccino’s on the steps of the Duomo. Quite an experience on a Sunday morning. Not much more form Milan, a weekend was enough time for me, any longer would have been too long.