Wednesday

Right! Now we get onto the interesting day.
I woke up really early, as I always do when I think that I have to be up early the night before. I didn't open my eyes and I could tell it was late. I tried to get back to sleep with no avail. Eventually after about an hour, or maybe half, I opened my eyes. My phone said it was half past 6am. I stayed in bed until 7, and then was bored enough to get up and get ready. An hour later I was showed, dressed, packed (with many things to keep me occupied on the train) and was off. I didn't have food in the flat so I went early to pam (supermarket) and got some bagettes. That kept me going. The train left at 5 to 9am, and I was happy about it. The train ticket was €25, which I consider a bit steep considering the euro and the pound are equal AND that is for a one way ticket.

The train journey passed tollerably. As we got nearer to Milan suddenly the countryside got snow covered. It started with bits of snowed shovelled to the edges of streets, and then became foggy snow covered fields! I was amazed! Bologna is nothing like that at the moment. I read sense and sensibilty. Liz rang me to tell me that she'd missed her train and therefore couldn't meet me until 45 mins after I arrived.

When I arrived I thought the station was cool. It was huge and reminded me of stations like York and Liverpool. I took a picture. I went outside into the piazza and was most unimpressed. I thought that the station would be in an impressive place, but it wasn't. There was a skyscaper for the Lombardia region there, and not much else interesting. The station was the most interesting thing there. It was cold so I decided to look for somewhere to go and consult my map. There were two macdonalds there, but I went down the main road I could see looking for a side road with a cafe. I did this for a while but it wasn't very fruitful. Eventually I found one. I sat down with a drink and my map, whilst marking a bunch of churches I wanted to see! Then I got a call from Liz to say that she'd arrived. I went to the loo, which was one of those hole in the floor ones!!! and then left.

I met up with Liz at the train station, it was nice to see her. I talked about going to the duomo, and she said we should take the metro. I was going to walk, but it looked a long way (we both have little legs) and it would be warmer underground. The metro reminded me alot of the underground in London, and the rest of Milan also had a London type busy and big feel. We got on the train and went to the Duomo. If you've seen pictures you know how OTT it is, but it was interesting nonetheless. We walked around it once and then wondered what to do. We then went off to walk to find another church. I started with the map reading, then I got confused and Liz took over. This was probably a bad plan. We got lost a few times, and then finally found what we had been looking for. It was pretty, but we couldn't go inside. On the way back we found a horse statue to look at, and then we went back to the Duomo, with another random church to see on the way. We got back to the Duomo and decided to look at the shops around about. We went into the prada shop, for amusment, and then into another shop. Then Liz's friend called about lunch (this is 2pm, so Italian lunchtime), we got ourselves on the train again.

When we arrived there Liz directed us until we found a park. From there we had no idea where to go, so we waited. Eventually Liz's friend Daniella arrived. Daniella is a really sweet primary school and middle school teacher. She also speaks pretty good english (I spoke to Liz about her own talking italian, and she said "nooo, no one ever hears me talk Italian). She chatted animatedly, as Italians do, about the children and the new marking system that is causing contention. As well as this, we went to this nice Indian deli type place and got samosas, bahjis and some rice chicken dish. It was v nice food, and she chatted on. One of her fellow teachers saw me and Liz from behind and confused us with being students. They have kids up to 13 there, and as both me and Liz are near the 5ft mark I can see maybe why that mistake was made. It was nice to see her though, and she generously paid for lunch. She then had a teachers meeting and me and Liz left.

We went back to the Duomo, as it seemed as good a place to start as any. I then pointed out another place on the map, and we decided to take a metro to it again. This involved chaging trains in the middle, but we managed. When we arrived we decided to go to the museum. This involved an hour of walking in both directions getting lost. Eventually we found it. As it was the last hour before closing we got in for free! They had an exhibit on the history of Milan, which was cool. It had tons of busts and some really cool moasics that you could get really close up to. They had an exhibition on the etruscans as well, so we went to that. It was only small, but it reminded me of a few things from my lectures. It counts as revision hehe. There was another room with a massive mosaic on the floor, which we looked at too. After this we went back and went to look at the church.

This was much easier to find as it was near the train station that we had come from. It was St Ambrogio, which I had learnt about in my course, and which is famous. When we arrived I spotted that there was a massive dig next to the church. Obviously the archaeologists had gone home (this was half past 5, and these are Italians) but we got to see the trench. Big hole, nothing interesting is what it looked like to me. We then went to the church. It had a beautiful courtyard to go through before you got to the doors. The belltowers also rang at one point. It was pretty, and I took a few pictures. Inside was similar to the outside, pretty and white. It had chapels along the sides. Some were more decorated than others. I took a picture of the nice mosaic on the apse ceiling, but there was a massive altar in the way for some of it. Spoilt the picture. We went all around, and then left.

After that we went back to the Duomo and rang Daniella, but her phone was still off. We sat in front of the duomo and watched people for a while. It was cold, but not uninteresting. There was an MTV Italia crew on one of the buildings filming the square. When a bunch of kids realised this they went to the place in the centre of the view of the camera and waved alot. Liz said she saw a man with a sword, but I wasn't sure, he did have a cloak on though and looked military and severe. We then got through to Daniella, and she took a good 45 mins to get to us. When she did, we went to the nearest fast food place, as the time was near for me to go. Liz got a pizza, I got us two burgerking. It was good enough, and I felt satiated. After that we got the metro to the main train station. It was half past 8 and the nearest train was at 9. It turned out that the ticket machines were closed for cash, so I had to go to the ticket office. They both left at this point.
I got my ticket and got on the train. I was quite tired. I read more sense and sensiblity for most of the way until it was half past ten and I was tired. After Modena (the last station before Bologna) I got all stressy that I had missed Bologna and that I was going to stay the night at some train depot. This was, however, just me being very tired and silly. When I got back to Bologna I thought about getting a taxi as I was so tired and cold. I didn't in the end though, and just walked home in the dark. I went almost straight to sleep