Lakes

Lets waste another 5 minutes of your life.  Where were we, Milan.  I must be honest I wasn’t looking forward to Milan.  I heard it was congested, busy, full of smog & expensive but I was pleasantly surprised.  It was expensive but we’d spent the last 6 months in Val, which is 1 of the dearest places on earth, so it wasn’t shocking, but the rest turned out to be false rumours.  For a city, it wasn’t especially congested, it was very clean, quite open & a near on relaxed feel to it.  The 1^st night we got the metro down to the Duomo (Cathedral) & it is a mighty spectacular building, even the wife (who is used to impressive sights) let out an involuntary ‘wow’. 

We spent a couple of days doing the sights and enjoying the Milan invention of Apperitevo.  They do this in all the bars & its great when you get used to it.  You buy an alcoholic drink for a set price (between 7-10 euros) then help yourself to an all you can eat anti-pasti buffet type thing.  We had a couple of drinks each & gauged ourselves on Italian food in a funky bar for a total of €30.  Blinding. 

The fresco of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ is in Milan.  We went but it’s a 2-week waiting list to see it, that’s a cue too much for me so, unfortunately, we missed it.  We all know what it looks like though don’t we; Jesus & his whore girlfriend getting pissed with his mates with 1 Judas threatening to slit her throat unless he gets a blowjob!  That’s how I see it anyway.  Indecently, was Judas named after Sol Campbell?  You wouldn’t want to be spending more than a couple of days in Milan though unless you wanted to spend your life savings on expensive shoes (& the wife was sorely tempted) so we got back on the train to the airport to pick up our car.  We saved €200 going back out of the city well worth trek round the underground with our luggage.  We picked up our Italian 2 seater, a beautiful silver 1.2L Lancia Y.  Technically it was a 4 seater but there is no way in this earth that you would fit 4 people in it but it was ideal for the tiny little lanes of our next destination.

The Italian lakes & more precisely, Lake Garda.  This is the biggest & most commercial of the lakes & that’s why we choose it.  We intended to look for a job here working with all the English & Yank tourist that plague the place.  It is simply stunning.  There is an element of over development about it but that doesn’t stop it being a picture of lake elegance & beauty.  Round every single of the many corners is another postcard vista & I’m truly grateful for the digital era, if I had to develop my camera-film like back in the day I would have sell my good kidney!  It’s a shame I can only put a few photo’s on for you but our luck with the Internet continues.  We booked a place specifically with Internet access, it turned out that this meant via a mobile O2 dongle, but it doesn’t work so it’s back to the good old Wi-Fi cafes.  Cant really complain though, the view is incredible. 

Our View from the Balcony