Where to begin? This weekend we tackled seven cities in three days. They included Arezzo, Bologna, Modena, whatever town the Ferrari Museum was in, Milan, Varenna, and Bellagio. We leave for Rome tomorrow at 7:55 in the morning, so I have laundry and packing and sleeping to do, so pictures will just be uploaded on Facebook in a week or two. Enjoy this novel of a post!
On Friday, our adventure began bright and early, rushing to the train station to catch the 8:05 train to Arezzo. We hopped on the train for the 15 minute ride, where we were serenaded by some accordion players asking for money. Apparently accordions are a big deal here, because a couple weeks ago a famous accordion player came to Santa Chiara during dinner.
In Arezzo, we were supposed to catch a train to Bologna, but the boys who planned this trip obviously didn’t do their research. I don’t remember if it wasn’t a direct train or it cost more, but we had to sit in Arezzo for 2 or 3 hours extra waiting for the right train. We sat on the steps of a church for a while and watched the Italians slowly make their way to work, watched groups of elementary students being corralled for a field trip to the church, and watched an older woman with a cane and floor-length fur coat get harassed by a panhandler until she gave him money. He said he just needed it for one coffee, and the woman was walking at the speed of snail, so she gave him a euro or two so he would leave her alone. He then walked away from her and the cafe and back to his post by the church steps. It was at this point I decided to give no mercy to panhandlers.
After wandering around Arezzo looking for places that were open, we made our way back to the train station and headed to Bologna. In Bologna we had to catch another train to Modena, where the Ferrari Museum is. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, some of us (me included) grabbed some pizza, while others went to McDonald’s – I refused to do that. Got back on a train, where we accidentally sat in first class, got offered a piece of paper with a prayer on it, got asked if we wanted to buy the piece of paper, and finally made our way to a wonderful place called Modena.
In Modena, we stepped off the train to the most disgusting place I have EVER been to, and I’ve been to Lawrence, Kansas. It was trashy and dirty and the people were scary. We got on a bus that would take us to the bus station where we would get on a bus to take us to the Ferrari Museum. Seeing as boys were in charge of this, it didn’t go so well. First, we missed our stop at the bus station and ended up taking a tour of the entire bus route. Every time we would stop, the boys (mostly Andres) would say, “Maybe it’s the next one…” It was never the next one. We finally stopped by another bus and the bus driver got out, told us to get on the other bus, and told the other bus driver where to take us. We finally got to the bus station, where we found out the next bus wasn’t for an hour or so. We went to a café where some people got beers and some people went to the bathroom (which was just a hole in the floor with foot grips and a plastic guard around it). We also saw a man stuck in time, he was about 80 years old, and just sitting at the bar staring out the window with a toothless grin on his face. MY theory is that he got stuck in the mud about 60 years ago and nobody unstuck him.
Our bus finally came and we had PDA in front of our faces for what seemed like hours, almost got out at the wrong stop, and then got off the bus and were instructed by the bus police (who check your tickets and take your passport if you don’t have one) where to walk to get to the museum. We made it to the Ferrari Museum where we got a discount for showing up an hour before they close. At this point we were about 6 hours behind schedule.
The Ferrari Museum was cool, although I do wish I had known ANYTHING about cars. It was just a bunch of shiny, pretty, fast machines to me. It was still interesting to see the progression of all the different cars and all the history that comes with a Ferrari. We saw Ferrari’s from every decade, saw Enzo Ferrari’s office (they moved the whole thing to the museum), saw engines and tires and awards and lots of overpriced Ferrari merchandise. Also saw a car that apparently you can’t get unless you already own 4 or 5 Ferrari’s.
After the Ferrari Museum, we made our way back to the train station. We needed to get something to eat, because our train wasn’t until later in the evening (since we missed a total of 3 trains and 2 buses we had planned on making) and wouldn’t arrive until 10pm. We walked down a loggia for about 3 minutes where we saw a lot of non-Italian creeps hanging around ghetto hair salons, “sexy shops” and ghetto clothing stores. We realized we should probably turn back and go to the only safe (dreaded) choice, McDonald’s at the train station. I ordered a Happy Meal for 4 euro which included a Hello Kitty toy, and a kiwi on a stick. Best choice ever! Unfortunately, my toy didn’t light up like it was supposed to, which just added to the list of things that went wrong in the hell on earth, Modena, Italy.
Lesson learned: Ferrari Museum is not worth it, and never let boys plan trips.
We finally arrived in Milan after 2 or 3 hours of train ride and were ecstatic when we de-trained. It was the most beautiful sight! We had finally arrived, and we were taking pictures of everything we saw, just grateful to be out of Modena and at our destination. The train station was wonderfully clean, lit and thriving with people despite the late hour. We were 2 hours late for our reservation at our hostel, so we got some 2-day Metro passes and booked it to our stop. (Side note – Ryan was offered some Italian guy’s e-mail address because he loved America so much, I guess he had studied in New York). When we came out of the Subway, we walked past some transvestites at a bus stop (who took a liking to Zach), and walked about half a mile to our hostel. Last thing I wrote in my journal sums it up pretty well, “12:23am Saturday - Just got to our hostel. Tired and feel gross but room is okay.” Pictures will be posted on Facebook of the hostel, so check there for a tour of our lovely abode. It was just like Goodnow Hall, but there were loud foreign people screaming at all hours of the night.
On Sunday we woke up early and got a head start on our day in Milan. We began by going to the Duomo. We took the subway, and when we walked up the steps we arrived right next to the Piazza in front of the Duomo. It was a beautiful day and the Duomo was magnificent! We began walking towards it in awe, and all of a sudden African men kept trying to give us bird seed and bracelets. They would actually try to put the bracelets on people’s wrists and then make them pay. They kept shoving bird seed in people’s hands, and they were very pushy and rude. Since I had already made my no mercy rule in Arezzo, every time they came close I would yell at them to go away. There had to have been 20 of them or more, because I would yell at a few of them to leave us alone, and then more would come up to us. SO ANNOYING. I might have told them to get a real job once or twice.
Once we got rid of the scoundrels as best we could, we took some pics inside and out of the Duomo. This is my new favorite church. So beautiful and intricate, and on the inside there were pieces of art work hanging between the arches. Pictures, once again, will be on Facebook eventually. The carving that was done on this cathedral was ridiculous. While inside the church, we saw some monks, lit some candles, saw a body in a shiny box (St. Charles Borromeo), admired the details, and took many illegal pictures. There was actually a sign on the outside of the church that had a bunch of symbols of things you can’t do, including a picture of the comedy and tragedy masks, interpreted as “no drama” in the cathedral!
Then we went to the top of the Duomo, walking up 160 steps in a narrow stairway (with people going back down at the same time). The first part of the roof tour was at the level of the buttresses of the cathedral. It was very cool to see all the detail put into the parts of the church that can’t even be seen. There were intricate carvings on everything, even on the back side of pillars and walls. We walked up some more steps and reached the very top of the Duomo. It was definitely worth all the energy and time to get up there. We could see all of the historic buildings around the Duomo, including the Galleria, as well as the modern sky scrapers in the distance. We could also see Switzerland! It was a beautiful view, and we took lots of pictures so be looking for those!
Milan is a historic city, but also the fashion capital of the world, so it could be related to NYC in size and structure. There were huge high-end stores all around the Duomo, and they were setting up for Fashion Week in the piazza next to the Duomo. We visited the Galleria, but felt too low-class to even go near the shops there. There was everything from a Mercedes-Benz store to Dolce and Gabbana.
We went away from the Galleria and closer to the university (which was a bust) to find something to eat. We found a new favorite, Doner Kebab, and we got to eat outside since it was so nice out. The kebabs we got here where much bigger than the ones in Florence. I could barely handle it. I had to hold it with one hand and I couldn’t set it down because I knew it would lose its shape and I would be in big trouble. So instead I had to have Andres, who we called “dad” the whole trip since he always seems to be running the show, open my water bottle. He didn’t put the cap back on, and my first thought was “Cara, you are going to spill that.” Two seconds after that thought crossed my mind, I went to reach for it and spilt the entire bottle on my leg and off the table. [SPILL OF THE DAY ALERT]. It was very embarrassing, seeing as we had a group of 14 people and the workers at Doner Kebab were making fun of us the whole time. For some reason, Geoff Ekey felt the need to poke his head out of the café and yell, “Spill of the day!” Thanks, Geoff, for pointing it out, as if it wasn’t obvious enough. So we started heading for the castle in Milan, me with I had a giant wet spot on my leg.
On our way to the castle, we saw a giant art piece of a tree with a face. It was by some American. Go USA! In front of the castle there were a lot of people trying to sell cheap toys and sunglasses, just like you would find in New York. There was a large fountain we sat by for a while, soaking up the sun since it was such a beautiful day. The castle with pretty lame, just a big wall basically, we didn’t go inside, I think they are restoring it because there was scaffolding everywhere. Once we got through the castle walls, however, we came to a large park. It was huge and beautiful and there was an arch at the other end and lots of grassy green fields and paths, and there was even a carnival! This was clearly the happening place to be, and we walked through the park to the arch at the other end, and back. Then some people played bumper cars, which was very entertaining for everyone. As we were leaving the park we noticed all the people selling things had disappeared, and there were police vans driving on the sidewalk. Silly gypsies.
We walked to a gelato place we had spotted on the way to the castle, and I tried one of the combinations on my list – strawberry and lemon. It tasted like heaven! It was like strawberry lemonade, or a lemonberry slush from Sonic. So good!! I also realized that I need to add mint and chocolate to my poll.
Annie had a book she found in Santa Chiara that talked about the shopping streets in Milan. We walked down the one with all the stores we can’t afford, and window shopped for things that we can’t buy. Then we found the semi-affordable street, and hit up some sales. We returned later that night while the boys, Annie, Brit and Sarah were at a soccer game. We went to H&M and an expensive restaurant, where we confused the waiter by only ordering first course. He said, “For starters? Orrr….no?” No, sir, just the first course, because we are broke.
We went back to the hostel to meet everyone to go out, and then we all passed out from exhaustion. This is getting excessively long, so I’m going to sum up Sunday. We woke up, checked out, went to a train station, got tickets for a day at Lake Como (important note – we decided it was a good idea to leave 5 minutes between arriving in Milan and departing for Arezzo to switch trains), sat on a bench but then realized we were sitting by the homeless people’s toilet (a spinning advertisement), moved to a café where they had strobe lights and a high pitched buzzing to keep the pigeons out, bought a 5 euro bottle of wine from a street vendor, bought a focaccia sandwich, got on the train to Varenna, and took a ferry to Bellagio. Unfortunately, Sunday was foggy and rainy, so all the beautiful sights were just a little less beautiful. In case you don’t know, Lake Como is just south of Switzerland, so we could see the Swiss Alps through the fog. This is also the lake that Villa Balbienello is at, which is where Star Wars II and a scene in Casino Royale were filmed at. Also the lake that George Clooney has a house at, but for some reason he didn’t answer our calls as we yelled for him when walking between beautiful mansions.
In Bellagio we strolled down to Punta Spartivento, which is the point that splits Laka Como and Lake Lenno. We popped open the cheap wine as we stood on a pier and used plastic cups, juggling our umbrellas at the same time. Basically, we are very classy. We didn’t have much time here because we had to get all the way back to Castiglion F.no that night. We strolled through a loggia full of scarves, sunglasses and ties, and other things we can’t afford, and made our way back to the ferry where we opened another bottle of wine. Our classiness leaves me in awe.
Keeping in mind that we had 5 minutes to switch trains in Milan, we began getting very nervous as the minutes ticked away and our train had not shown up yet. The train in Varenna ended up being 3 minutes late, which cut our time to get to our next train down to two minutes. As we approached the Milan station, we started walking towards the front of the train so we could get closer to the platform to switch trains. There was a line of about 9 of us, backpacks and umbrellas and all, walking car to car through all the people (and boy scouts, who didn’t seem to know they had seats that were out of the aisles) trying to get to the front of the train. As we began to slow down, we started getting more nervous. If we didn’t make this train, we would have to wait a few hours to leave on a more expensive train that would get us to Arezzo at 5 am, where we would have to wait another hour for the train to Castiglion F.no. We had to get off the train, go find the board to find out what platform our train was on, validate our tickets, and get on the train. All in two minutes. We decided to have a designated runner, Luke. He led the pack of us, darting through confused Italians, as we ran to our train. It all went so fast I don’t know how we found our train, but I remember turning the corner to our platform as the conductor was blowing his whistle. We all got on and realized we were missing two people – Annie and Zach. They were nowhere in sight, so I said to the conductor, “Due mas!” and he just stared at me as I pointed behind me, at nothing because they weren’t there. Luckily, a man had about 5 suitcases to load onto the train, which postponed the conductor from leaving, and Luke ran and found Annie and Zach. We all crammed onto the train, waiting for the conductor because we decided not to validate our tickets. If you don’t validate your ticket, it is a 50 euro fine and they can take your passport. The conductor told us to go sit down, so I think he just wanted all 11 of us out of the way. I couldn’t believe we made it to our train. I still can’t believe we pulled that off. We may or may not have finished a third bottle of wine on the 5 hour train.
We had half an hour in Arezzo and then a 15 minute train ride home sweet home to Castiglion Fiorentino. We all went to Pirate Bar because we hadn’t eaten since noon, and it was about midnight. We found everyone there, all ready to party, but we were just exhausted and hungry. We had some pizzas and then went back to Santa Chiara and went to bed. What a weekend.
Tomorrow we leave for Rome at 7:55 am, and will be there until Thursday. On Friday we go to Pompeii, and then this weekend Kelsey and I are going to Sorrento and Capri with some other people. I’m excited to visit the inspiration for CapriSun.
If you just read this whole post you win a prize.
Cara Marie
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