Ciao di Milano! Today we are on a little break, after three intense days of touring Rome, we needed a low key day in Milan. We arrived at the Hotel Sabatino around 1 pm, after illegally riding the street car (not intentionally, I promise). The hotel is very cute, and we have a little balcony over looking the back terrace, sadly though, this is our first room in Italy without a bidet- whatever will we do??

After settling in, we set out on a mission to find a UPS store (so I could ship some souvenirs and unnecessary clothes home) and a restaurant for lunch/dinner. After the concierge sent us on a wild goose chase through the metro and around another area of the city, we ended up taking a taxi to the store- where they promptly informed me (in broken English and mostly Italian) that it would cost £313 (more than $400) to send the stuff home- no grazie! We called another taxi to take us back to our hotel and, after a minor temper tantrum on my part, we went out in search of food.

Everywhere that we went did not open for dinner until 7pm so we ducked into an adorable little café/bar and had some drinks and snacks until we could go to a real restaurant for a meal. The bartender/barista did not speak any english so we had to motion and do our best impressions of how we think Italian sounds to communicate what we really wanted- it was a funny game of charades! During this time, a couple of guys came in and began talking and joking with the bartender about us and although I cannot be sure of exactly what they were saying, I do understand a lot of Italian and know they were talking about us and free drinks...?! The guys noticed that I was paying attention and reacting to their conversation, and I understood the bartender tell the guys that we might understand them because it sounds a lot like Spanish- si correcto! It was pretty funny but we did not want to be topic of conversation any longer so we left to get some dinner. We had pasta and pizza at a cute Italian restaurant, where I tried Limoncello- delicioso! After eating and drinking too much we returned to our hotel to get ready for the trip to Nice tomorrow and a couple of days on the beach!! Yay!

-Amber