Blogs from Lombardy, Italy, Europe - page 16

Travelling day today as we catch two trains to get to Milan. Left Lyon about 10.30 for the first trip into Geneva Swiizerland. We follow a river all the way up as the scenery changes into the mountains. There was no passport control, but police are on the train and check all passengers. Arriving at Geneva, walk through customs and they are just randomly checking a few, but not us. We had an hour between trains, which is enough to get your bearings and double check the next train you get on is the right one. Buying Subway for lunch unaware that we need Swiss Franks and if we gave them Euro, we would only get Swiss money for the change. Not something you think about, just used the Visa card. Back on the next train ... read more

Today was our last day in Milan and on vacation. I felt so ill that I cancelled the tour I had booked because I couldn’t imagine walking around in the heat for 3 hours. I rallied a little in the late morning so we headed downtown to the highly reputed La Rinascate department store so I could look for something cute and unusual for TDB. What we found was Bloomindale’s with more high-end goods. There were more designer names than I’ve ever seen in one place, although since I buy almost everything online I'm not usually in settings with lots of high end clothing stores. Like high end department stores I've been in, La Rinascate was organized into little “boutiques”, one for each designer with a salesperson attending to each of the “boutiques”. In the US, ... read more

We had high expectations for the Milan World’s Fair since they expect 20 million visitors over the course of the event. Plus, the opening provoked violent protests by 30,000 people so we figured there would be some content, maybe even politically incorrect content. The theme of the event is food sustainability and accessibility. A lot of countries exhibiting don’t have much to say since they can’t feed their population today and certainly won’t be able to do so tomorrow, in other words food is neither accessible or sustainable in their countries. Scant attention was paid to the issues of hunger and if you don't even talk about problems, how can you contemplate fixing them? E ven in the US where hunger is problem for 1/3 of the children in this country, you would have thought everyone ... read more

Geo: 45.9877, 9.26198Bellagio was so beautiful that we had to come back.Caught the train from Milan to Varenno-Esino, and a ferry to Bellagio. A light lunch in town, then a shuttle bus to the hotel.Checked in and had a short rest, then back down to town for a ride on the tourist bus.Wandered around a few shops, then back to the hotel for a shower before dinner. Wine tasting in the courtyard, followed by buffet dinner = awesome!... read more

Geo: 45.4637, 9.18813Early start today up at 5.30 - Wendy drove us to Heathrow (Thx Wendy) bit of a struggle with the traffic on the M25 but we got there with plenty of time to spare. Flight delayed, but we got to Milan without any stress and the weather is beautiful. Bus into the city and a taxi to the Hotel Lancaster.Feeling much cleaner after a shower and a bit of a rest.Had a walk around/ near our hotel, fiund a nice pizza/pasta restaurant for dinner.Now I just need to workiut how to upload photos, and we can show some food pictures!... read more