Jim's thoughts on the trip thus far

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Geo: 45.4637, 9.18813

This has been such a blessing to be able to go on this trip with Wendy. We are so fortunate and I want everyone to know we do not take that for granted. God is so good to us as a couple, family, and nation. It is also an incredible blessing to have a mostly healthy back again. I had major back surgery in late May, and on faith, we booked this trip. We knew a lot of walking would be involved and I could not even consider such a thing the past couple years. But here I am, walking away. Per FitBit, Friday I had 15000 steps and Saturday I had 25000 steps. Not sure how many miles that is, but I'm sure well over 10 anyway.

It is good to see how other nations live. In the case of Italy it's probably not that much different than our big cities, but a lot different than rural or suburban living in the US. I have really enjoyed Milano. It's really a nice "bigger" city and they do a great job of keeping it clean and in order. The panhandlers are very non-aggressive and seldom even ask Wendy or me if we will buy something. I must look grumpy to them (at least I try to). Milano is a city that has always been known to be on the cutting edge, thus there are essentially no Roman ruins here as they were disposed of long ago to make room for new things. Apparently, they had quite a coliseum here, similar in size to Rome's but that was destroyed long ago by the early Christians when they received religious freedom. Makes sense, as thousands died in the Coliseum as entertainment they probably did not care about the historical importance of the place.

We also learned Milano was a city of water, much like Venice. I believe our guide said there are four rivers that run through the city, but now they are underground. There are early photos of the city with canals running through it.

I believe Wendy has kept everyone up to speed on what we have seen and done so I won't go into details on that. It has been a great trip so far to a beautiful city, with beautiful weather, with a beautiful wife. Life is good!

Wendy Here:
It's 12:01 now and we're just about to head out, probably good if we get out of here at 12:30, so much for getting a fairly early start. We "slept" until 10:30 with several HOURS of not being able to sleep in the middle of the night, so we'll see how the day goes!

I echo Jim's thoughts above, feeling very blessed to be able to go on this adventure with him, getting to experience another culture and just have the time away from our everyday life.

Will let you know what we did when we return!
A Presto,
Wendy

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