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Milan, Marseilles, and Florence

Milan – We arrived in Milan very early in the morning. Luckily, right when we got off the bus, the tube stations were opening. We had no directions to our hotel, so we spent a long time standing in front of a map hanging on the station wall trying to find the street it was on. Thank goodness it was on a bigger street, or it wouldn’t have been listed on this map.
We bought out tickets for the tube and we about halfway to our stop when Alex realized that his plastic bag (carrying his camera, camcorder, the purple folder with all our hotel and bus information, shower stuff, books, and souvenirs) was missing. We had switched trains once by this time, and we freaked out because he might have left it on the previous train. We went back to the bus station with little hope to look for it there, and to our extreme joy, we found it sitting, untouched, in front of the map we had been looking at for so long.
We got back on the train and made our way to our hotel. The two women at the counter spoke very little English, but we managed all right. They told us that we could wait ten minutes and one of them would get our room ready, even though it was seven in the morning. We were so happy. Our room was very nice and very big. It had a large bed, a chair, a desk, a TV, a closet, a shower, and a bidet…in plain view. No toilet though! I guess the Italians are less modest than Americans.
We fell asleep until almost one in the afternoon. When we got up, we had a snack and then decided to go running. It was an eight mile run, and it was not much fun. There were a lot of people out on the street, and besides the fact that the sidewalks were very narrow, the Italians are very slow-moving people. We were dodging around left and right to avoid running into people. Eventually we came to a park and did a few miles in there before turning around. We had been so busy dodging people on the way there that we didn’t pay good attention to where we were going, so we got very lost when we ran back home. By the time we finished the run, we were nowhere near our hotel, so we had to get on the tube to go back.
We showered up at the hotel, and then walked around Milan in search of cheap dinner. We found what we were looking for a Hua Nan, a really cheap Chinese restaurant where I got sweet and sour pork for 3 euro fifty. After eating dinner, we searched for a gelateria to get our first taste of the famous Italian ice cream. We found a little family-owned shop after about 10 minutes of walking. I got a cone with a scoop chocolate chip and a scoop of amaretto. Alex did the ordering in Spanish, because the family didn’t speak English, like many of the people in Italy, but we found that they could mostly understand Spanish. We walked home while enjoying our gelato and went directly to bed.
The next morning, we got up, showered, and went to the huge grocery store a few blocks away to get food for the day. The grocery store had everything we wanted except peanut butter. Alex even found a swimsuit there, and I bought some new soap since my bottle had cracked. After the grocery store, we stopped at an internet café to check out what there was to do in Milan. I was starving, so I ate a huge amount of our new cereal, bran sticks, which turned out to be a huge mistake (as you will find out later).
We ate a quick lunch at the hotel and then went over to the Duomo Cathedral in the Duomo Square. As soon as we stepped out of the tube stop, these two guys forced corn into our hands. Within seconds, pigeons were landing all over us. The guys snapped a photo of us with my camera, and then demanded 10 euro. Alex was outraged since they never asked us if we wanted the corn, and he gave them two out of pity.
The exterior of the cathedral was magnificent – all in white – but I had worn a skirt that day since it was hot, so we couldn’t go in. We then just took a walk all around the commercial center of Milan. We stopped in a little mall with all these Italian designer shops, and walked around the main shopping and dining districts near the mall. We also passed through the Colonne di San Lorenzo, which are ancient ruins (very small, though) in the shopping district. They are really just a set of old columns at which locals hang out and drink. It was supposed to be cool, but it was mostly inhabited by smoking Goths, so we just passed by.
By this time, we were starting to get pretty hungry, so we went back to the area near our hotel to find something cheap to eat. We found a place selling cheap pizza, and I got a huge piece of pepperoni pizza for my dinner. In Italy, they cut up your pizza into little squares and you eat them with a toothpick, which I thought was pretty cool.
We were still pretty hungry after the pizza, so we stopped at a huge gelateria to get some gelato. We each ordered huge cones with three scoops since we couldn’t make up our minds on what flavors to get. I had a hankering for vanilla that night, so I got cream, meringue, and chocolate chip gelato. Alex got two coffee flavors and a scoop of Nutella, which he thought was fudge gelato. Nutella is really thick and heavy, kind of like chocolate peanut butter (except with hazelnuts), and he felt really sick by the time he was done eating his cone.
We went back to the hotel to let the gelato settle a bit, and then we had to do a short four-mile run. This is where the trouble with the bran struck. We were about two miles into the run when I had to go number two REALLY bad from all that fiber. It was pretty late at night, so nothing in the area was open, and there are barely any public toilets in Europe. In fact, even if there was a public toilet in the area, I couldn’t have used it, because the toilets in Europe cost money, and we had none. So I had to go in the bushes. Yeah, I am that hardcore. I’m just glad I didn’t use the leaves to wipe, as you will see.
After a much-needed shower, we went to bed. The next morning, I woke up with a weeping, itchy, red rash all over my feet, legs, and butt. Yes, those bushes where I squatted the night before were poison ivy. Lucky me.
All right, so now that you’re done laughing, I will get on with describing my day. It began with a run in the park we had found two days earlier. It was a great run, with some fast 800s, but it took longer than expected, especially since we took the tube to get there, so we had to cut it short and get back to the hotel so we could check out in time. We got out of the room at exactly eleven, but I still had wet hair and no makeup on my face. The lady at the front desk was really sweet though, and let me finish getting ready in the main bathroom.
We left our luggage back at the hotel and stopped again at the same grocery store to get some apples and sandwich materials for lunch. We made up our sandwiches at a park nearby, where we were entertained by pigeons, a drunk homeless man, and some kids playing on the slide. It started to get cold around then, so we stopped back at the hotel to grab our coats.
We quickly stopped at the bus station to get our tickets to Marseilles, and then we went back to the Duomo Cathedral (avoiding the pigeon men this time) to see the inside. The cathedral was pretty, with Gothic architecture, although I didn’t like it as much as the Sacre-Coeur. Alex took some footage inside, although, as usual, photos weren’t allowed.
The next thing we did was go to the Castello Sforzesco, which is the famous castle in Milan. We took a look at the gardens first. They were huge and beautiful, and they had a small (dirty) lake in the middle. It was a nice day, and we sat on a fence by the lake and enjoyed the sunshine before going in to the castle, which was free. It was not extremely big or impressive, but it had some nice statues and big open courtyards. There was also some interesting Chinese art (enormous white statues) on display, because there was some kind of art exhibit going on later that week.
We left the castle and stepped out into a giant square with a huge fountain in the middle. We took some photos by that before going back to get our luggage. We were really hungry, and we wanted some cheap food, so we decided to return to Hua Nan. However, after dragging our luggage all the way there, we found out that it wouldn’t open for another 45 minutes. We didn’t feel like going anywhere else, so we sat on the street corner with our luggage and read books – basically we looked, as usual, like classy homeless people.
After another cheap meal of sweet and sour pork, we went over to wait for our bus at the bus station. I was exhausted and fell asleep while reading my book. When we finally got on the bus, we were relieved to find out it was very empty. I stretched out on the backseat, but just as I was about to fall asleep, we had to get off the bus for a meal break (I hate being required to get off the bus!). It was supposed to take a half hour, but the jerk bus driver took over an hour because he was flirting and smoking cigarettes. A few stops later, he insulted me in Spanish (the only language he spoke) for taking up all of the back seat, and made me move because more people were coming on. After that, sleeping was out of the question, because the bus was extremely crowded. I leaned on Alex and got a few hours in, but I was tired when we got to Marseilles.

Marseilles – The very first thing we did when we got to Marseilles is wait in the bus station for the Eurolines booth to open so we could buy our tickets to Florence. When it did open, I bought both the tickets entirely in French, which I thought was pretty exciting.
We then got on the tube, which was attached to the bus station, and went to our hotel. The hotel was nothing much, but at least clean. The staff was very nice, but they wouldn’t let us check in early, so we stored our luggage there and went to find something to eat. We found a little bread shop nearby, and Alex got a coffee, and I got a big piece of raisin bread. We sat there and ate, and then we decided to return to the hotel to wait until check-in.
The hotel had free wireless, so Alex used that to check his email while I fell asleep on the couch in the lounge. I slept for almost two hours before Alex woke me up and said our room was ready.
Immediately after dropping our bags off in our room, we went for a six-mile run. We began at the Vieux Porte, which is the oldest port in the sea town, and ran along La Corniche, which is a walkway built alongside the sea. The views were absolutely beautiful. You could see the Chateau d’If, the prison where Napoleon was held during his exile, as well as Les Calanques, which are natural fjords to the east of Marseilles. We ran past many beaches, and we stopped at one to feel the sand and the sea (which was very cold). I also got to see my first topless sunbathers (old women).
We decided to run the full six miles along La Corniche instead of turning back after three miles, because it was so beautiful. We finished at some gravel beaches near the borders of Marseilles, and then we had to take the bus back to get to the Vieux Porte again. The bus system in Marseilles is not great, so we had to wait a long time for the bus to come.
When we finally got back to the hotel, we showered up and then went to have dinner. We originally wanted to have bouillabaisse, which is a fish soup dish that is famous in Marseilles, but it is very expensive (around 80 euro per person!). So we walked around the Vieux Port and found a cheaper restaurant that served seafood pasta and pizza. Our hostess was very rude and spoke to me only in English, but our server was nice, just very absentminded. She kept forgetting things, such as our drinks, as well as dirty dishes on tables. But at the end of our meal, which was very good, she told us (in French) that it was very nice to listen to us, which I thought was sweet. We went home right after our meal and went to bed.
The next morning we got up early to go for a nice long run, again along the Corniche. This had some faster miles in it, and it felt so good to be running in the sunshine along the sea. This run was probably my favorite run of all time.
We went back to the hotel and took a quick shower, and then got ready to go to the beach. After checking out, we went back to the same bread store, where I again got my raisin bread and Alex got a sandwich for breakfast. The same girl was working, and I guess she liked us, because she gave us two éclairs for free! One was chocolate-filled, and the other was some kind of caramel filling that was amazing. We thought it was so sweet of her, and we gave her a big tip before we left.
We then got on the bus and went down to the beach where we had finished our run the day before. It was a beautiful, hot day, with lots of sunshine, and there were a lot of people at the beach. Some people were actually swimming, although I personally thought the water was too cold. Alex and I laid on the beach all afternoon, reading and soaking up the sun’s rays. We had planned on going to the Chateau d’If that afternoon, but I was enjoying the beach way too much to leave, so we stayed until it started getting cold, around 5pm.
We took the bus back to the city center, which was very hot and crowded with beachgoers, including these very obnoxious, smelly boys. Alex and I were very happy to get off it, because we were both starting to feel very sick by the end. We walked to a grocery store nearby, and we picked up some stuff to make sandwiches and more snacks for the road.
We went back to our hotel to pick up our luggage, and while we were there, we used the public toilet to wash ourselves, because we were full of sand, dirt, and greasy sunscreen. We then went outside and ate our dinner by a giant fountain near the hotel.
At this point, there was nothing else to do, so we returned to the bus station to wait for our bus. There was a nice lounge inside, because it was also a train station, so we sat in there for a while and read our books. We got a bit hungry after a while, so we went over to the little McDonalds inside the station and got a chocolate sundae. By the time we were done eating, it was time to go outside to wait for the bus.
Our bus driver, a flustered-looking lady, was nice, but the bus was very crowded (as usual), so Alex and I sat next to each other and tried to get a few hours of sleep before we got to Florence.

Florence – So I had been really excited to go to Florence, since I had studied its history in Ac Dec, but when I got there, I was sorely disappointed. It was a dirty, old, tourist-ridden city. A lot of things were under construction, including the Piazza de Santa Maria Novella, which was the plaza near which our hostel was located. There was a tourist information point at the Santa Maria Novella (one of Florence’s many famous churches), and we stopped by to get a map before going to our hostel.
The place was located in a dirty little street (more like an alleyway) on the second floor. It greatly resembled the street in its dirtiness. A decrepit old lady who barely spoke English ran the place. She quickly showed us around, gave us a key, and then disappeared. We quickly took a shower in the very dirty bathroom (thank goodness for flip-flops), showed our luggage in a cabinet, and went to an Internet café across the street to see what were the most interesting things to do in Florence.
We decided to go see the Duomo Cathedral (its real name is the Santa Maria del Fiore). It was in the process of being cleaned, so the front was beautiful, painted in a green and white theme, but the sides and the dome were very dingy. The dome was enormous though. We decided to go in later because there was a very long line to get in (people were waiting for the Sunday Mass to finish). We snapped some photos of the outside, as well as the little church with golden doors next to the cathedral, called the Campanile. We then went to go see Michelangelo’s David.
David is located inside the Galleria dell'Accademia. We had to stand in line and pay to get in to the little museum, but it had some nice Italian Renaissance paintings, as well as the original plaster models of the majority of the statues found around the city. David was spectacular, and I managed to take an illegal photo of him before getting yelled at by one of the staff.
After spending some time in the museum, we went back to go see the inside of the Duomo. It was actually a huge letdown. We thought that the inside would be spectacular like the outside, but the coolest thing inside were probably the huge columns the supported the dome. There were a few statues and some very bland stained glass – no paintings, no beautiful architecture (except the dome, which we weren’t even allowed to walk under), and barely any decorations at all. Needless to say, we didn’t stay long.
After seeing the church, we were started to feel really hungry, so we walked along a dining/shopping street and bought two big BLTs with eggs (and way too much mayonnaise), as well as giant cones of gelato. I tried mixed berry, coconut, and chocolate chip (my favorite flavor). The gelato in Florence was amazing, and perhaps the best part of the entire city!
Neither of us was feeling very good by that time, because it was hot outside and we hadn’t gotten much sleep on the bus, so we decided to go back to the hostel and take a nap. I woke up many hours later with a really bad sore throat, a stuffy nose, and a headache. Alex went running (which he told me the next day was a beautiful run along the river), but I stayed in and slept straight on until 9 the next morning.
I still wasn’t feeling well in the morning, but I had to go running with Alex because we were running to the bus station to get our tickets. We didn’t run long though (like 5 minutes), because the bus station was close. We had planned on running more after that (I was going to go home if I felt bad), but trouble struck at the bus station. There was a line almost out the door, and only one person selling tickets, so we had to wait in line forever. Once we got to the counter, we found out that Grenoble wasn’t on the list of cities covered by the Eurolines Pass (even though I swear it was, I checked all the cities – it must have changed). The lady was nice and sold us a ticket to Lyon, which was a city covered by the pass, and told us to just get off one stop before Lyon in Grenoble.
There was no time to run by then if we wanted to check out on time, so we went back to the hotel. After showering, we checked out. There was no place to store our luggage, so we had to drag it with us, which was a pain because it was hot. We decided to go to a famous bridge, the only one that the Germans didn’t bomb in World War II. Today it is lined with very expensive jewelry shops. We had fun looking at all the jewelry we could never afford and taking pictures. After seeing the bridge, we walked into the shopping district of Florence and bought lunch – pizza for me and a sandwich for Alex.
After eating, we returned to the bus station to check in for the bus. There was no waiting room inside, so we had to sit outside in the hot sun while waiting for our bus to come. The bus was very crowded, and this time had the added bonus of screaming children. The two kids nearest to us screamed for about two hours until falling asleep. When they woke up, they were actually cute, and Alex, me, and a man sitting near us entertained the two kids by playing with them and giving them books and other things to look at. Once they got off, the ride was pretty boring, but I still didn’t sleep at all on our way to Grenoble.