Italy!

Hi all,

It's been a while since our last post, so this one will be extra long and probably extra boring.

Since we last wrote (while we were in Switzerland), it became freezing and since Al and I haven't packed appropriate winter clothing we had to run away from the cold. We packed our stuff and headed south towards Italy.

After a short - but nevertheless expensive - train trip we found ourselves in Milan. We walked out of the train station and were instantly lost, and this is how we were to spend 90% of our time in Milan. After walking around like losers for a good hour or so, we bit the bullet and got a taxi to our hostel. Driving in Milan is much like driving in South Korea it seems. There are rarely lane markings and most signs seem to be taken as making friendly suggestions rather than enforcing road rules.

We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went to find somewhere to have a beer. The guy at the hostel had given us a map and highlighted all of the local attractions so we figured it shouldn't be a problem to find our way around. Wrong. Either the map is wrong or someone has been slowly removing streets from Milan, but the two don't match up. We spent most of our first night wandering around being lost, until we called it a night and went home.

The following day we went to find some coffee and breakfast. As you'll probably know, coffee in Italy is freaking awesome. After breakfast, we figured it'd be best to get lost again, so we did. Like any major city, Milan has a lot of people wanting money for rather simple things (buskers etc), which we mostly managed to avoid, but during this particular lost adventure we were targetted by some very sneaky africans. They quickly grab you, tie a tiny bracelet around your wrist, shake your hand and then don't let go until you pay some money. Al managed to get two bracelets for 40 cents, but I ended up paying 1 Euro, 50 Polish cents and 10 Czech cents and I only got one bracelet! Here's what it looks like to be a sucker in Milan:

So after a few days in Milan, most of which was spent looking at a map, we decided to meet up with a friend of ours, Sonia, who lives in Zone. Sonia picked us up from the train station and took us to see a sweet Italian castle. The first thing you’ll notice about this part of Italy is how healthy the trees and plants look, and after staying a while it’s obvious why...just a bit of exercise each day can work wonders:

After a bit of a wander, we went back to Sonia’s place for some dinner. Sonia’s house is beautiful, and so is her cooking. Our first night and we were enjoying authentic home-made Italian pasta..my god I don’t know if I’ll ever leave.

Attention! Sonia’s uncle is Italian, is a plumber, and his name is Luigi! Also, he wears green overalls and hat and has a pet dinosaur.

The following day we woke up around 11, slowly had some coffee and breakfast and set off to check out some Italian sights. Here’s a photo of Al and Sonia enjoying some sun:

We took a trip around a massive lake, but unfortunately we weren’t able to capture any decent photos. Either our camera sucks or our photography sucks...hmm. We got drunk that night. After waking up without hangovers, we packed into the car and made our way to Venice.

First thoughts when you arrive in Venice: “looks like someone left a tap on here! No wonder mum went mental when I’d do that as a kid”. It’s very beautiful in Venice, and it’s my guess that it’s probably very romantic there also. One downside is that it’s very difficult to get a good photo of the city (or is it the photographers?) but here’s the best one we could manage:

We drove back to Zone that night and got some sleep because the next day was going to be a big one. But then it wasn’t, we had a few beers and slept most of the day. Al and I have been keeping an eye out for arcades throughout Europe, and noticed that there aren’t many (particularly in Germany), but we found one here! Nice! We approached the lady behind the counter to ask whether we needed to purchase tokens to play the machines, but she didn’t speak a word of English. After a bit of pointing and miming, she handed us each a pair of bizarre looking shoes and pointed us down the hall. Turns out we were now going to play a bit of bowling. A bit more pointing and miming and we had a beer each. Here’s a photo:

Waking up each morning at 11 to spend the day eating and drinking had been quite stressful for Al and I so we decided we needed to find somewhere to unwind. Sonia suggested some hot springs at the top of a snowy mountain close-by and we all agreed this was a great idea.

Notes on snow: Cold and wet.
Note on hot springs: Warm and awesome.

So we walked through the snow for a bit, paid 40 Euros each, changed into bath robes and started relaxing in saunas, mud baths and a pool heated by the hot springs. Not that we deserved it, but it was truly relaxing. While floating around in that pool over looking snow capped mountains you could’ve told me the fourex brewery had burned to the ground and I would not have batted an eyelid. I don’t think we were supposed to take photos, but here’s a few we snapped:

After we were done relaxing, Sonia let us know about a nearby town where you could buy duty free alcohol. Al and I had a quick private discussion weighing up the pros and cons of duty free alcohol and came to the conclusion that we should go there.

The roads became a bit icy and for a while I was scared (for maybe the first or second time in my life), but duty free is duty free so we pushed on. It was negative ten degrees here, and this is what it looked like:

Additional notes on snow: Fucking freezing.

Here’s a photo of Al, AKA the ambiguous entity (he’s a man...but he’s wearing a scarf?).

And Dan, AKA the man (I carry a scarf, but don’t wear it. It’s simply for giving to ladies or strangling bears etc). By the way, this photo also displays Al's great photography skills, a good example of his favourite "finger across lens" technique.

Long story short, it was freezing there and I was happy when we got home and I could cruise under my doona.

Speaking of doonas, Al and I have been having to share double beds a bit on this trip, which is normally fine because we sleep with our backs to each other on opposite extremes of the bed. I only mention this because the other night, in his sleep, Al tried to hold my hand! Ha! What a girl! Don’t worry, I woke up swearing and saying homophobic stuff. He says he doesn’t remember it, but I think he probably does.

Well that’ll probably do for this blog post. I think we’ll be staying in Italy for a little while yet so I’ll update this blog with other boring stuff.

Take care dudes,

Dan and Al