MILAN AND LAKE COMO

Friday arvo we set off for Milan.  We had organised to stay with a guy called Saverio whom we had met a few years ago through Anna's friend Steph.  After a 1.5 hr train ride, he picked us up from the train station and took us back to his "loft" which was only a few minutes from the centre of town.

After a few vino's we went out for dinner with Saverio and his girlfriend Francesca to one of their favourite restaurants.  I loved my Milanese style risotto, but I wish I had ordered the roast pork that Anna had!  We then went to see the Duomo at night (which was an impressive sight!) before having gelati at Milan's most popular gelateria and then out for a few cocktails in an area called Naviglio Grande and then called it a night.

The next morning we had a small breakfast of coffee and nutella on bread before hitting the streets for some sightseeing.  First off we went down Via Monte Napoleone which is Milan's most expensive shopping strip, including all the big labels and some pretty nice cars in the street as well!

We then did a bit of shopping in a slightly cheaper area before heading off to see the Duomo properly.  What an amazing building!  It took almost 600 years to complete, is the 4th largest cathedral in the world and the largest in Italy (not including the Vatican).

praying for the Dees to have a win, unfortunately my prayers are yet to be answered

After lunch we went to an area called La Brera which was a really cool area and so different to the rest of the city which is really nothing special.  After shrugging off the African guys trying to sell us fake bags, we settled into a tiny little cafe for coffee and dessert which was delicious!

It was then time to make our way to Milan's famous San Siro stadium to see AC Milan vs Genoa.  Although AC Milan were expected to easily win, a crowd of 40-50,000 was still anticipated, so I was really really excited as I had never been to a European soccer match before.  Actually, I had never been to a soccer match full stop.
A quick beer out the front of the stadium and we headed in to find our seats.

 

It seemed odd that as we were entering the stadium, a lot of people were leaving.  We just assumed they were going out for a smoke as pretty much all of Italy does!  Unfortunately the reason was that a player in an earlier match had a heart attack on the field and later died and therefore the Italian Football Federation decided to cancel all remaining games for the rest of the weekend.  The players name was Piermario Morosini and he played for Livorno in the lower B Series division.  He was only 25 and after already losing his parents and brother earlier in his life, is now survived by his handicapped sister, very sad.
Equally as upsetting was the fact that after all the excitement of going to the soccer, we had to turn around and go home..........Not happy!!!!!!!!!!

It had been a pretty long day, and as Anna and I had to be up quite early in the morning, we decided to stay in for a home cooked meal and some lovely vino rosso.

Sunday morning Saverio kindly dropped us off at the train station around 6:30am and we were off to Lake Como.  Our first stop was the actual town of Como which seemed to be a beautiful town, although we couldn't see much as again it was a crappy day and the clouds were so low that sometimes you couldn't see further than a few hundred metres.  We walked around for a little while, had breakfast and then boarded the slow ferry bound for the town of Bellagio that we had heard so much about.
As the photo's show, it was cloudy, cold and wet, but we both thought that the clouds gave the place a bit of an eerie feel to it which was kind of cool.

The ferry took around 2.5 hours and basically zig-zagged up the lake, stopping at all the towns along the way to pick up people (although because of there weather there was hardly anyone around).

Some of the houses or villa's around the lake were awesome.  We especially loved all the different colours and thought how nice it would be to have one of these in summer time!

Of course the villa that we were most interested in was the one that everyone talks about when you mention Lake Como - George Clooney's villa!
Anna thought she saw him getting changed in one of the windows, but I'm pretty sure she was dreaming!

By the time we got to Bellagio it was almost lunch time.  We walked around the small town for a little while, had a look at a few shops and took a few photo's.  It was a great town and you could tell why everyone loves it so much.

I've always loved jumping in photo's.  It's my way of making the photo look different from your everyday photo standing there with a smile on your face.  Unfortunately I chose the wrong place and the photo below ended up with me landing awkwardly and almost fainting from the excruciating pain.

However, we still needed lunch.  The nice waiter brought me an icepack and we were treated to some seriously good food!

From Bellagio, we needed to get a ferry across to Varenna where we then had to walk 15 minutes to the train station to get a train back to Milan and then another train back to Florence.  It was a tough journey on one leg, but helped by a really nice bloke who drove us to the train station in Varenna; that was a huge help!  Once Anna got over being angry at me, she was as always a loving girlfriend who was great in getting me back home!