Duck's Deductions: European Adventure

From Nice the plan was to head back to Milan because I flew out of there the next morning and we hadn't actually saw any of the sights on arrival. The good news was that we got to sleep in some; the train didn't leave until 8:30 compared with the normal 6:30ish departures. Yay! But once again we made our way to the train station and elected to get pastries along the way (do you sense a pattern yet)? With pastries in hand we entered the train station to find out that the train line was closed between Nice and the Italian border. OH! GREAT!

We were told to go to the customer service next door to get more information though the rumors we heard were either a line was down or workers decided to go on strike (apparently it is not uncommon for the train workers to strike after the Monaco Grand Prix because they feel overworked and are exhausted from the crowds. hmmm). So we got in a nice (pun not intended, but fitting) long line with everyone else trying to get into Italy so we could figure out was going on. We briefly talked about just hanging around Nice and exploring some more and catch a later train or a super early one in the morning. However, this was the one day that it decided to start raining on us. Every day before had been sunny and beautiful, but today it had to rain. Of course. Nix that plan.

There we were standing, and waiting, and standing, and waiting. Then it was our turn, time to figure out what was happening and what to do...oh wait, turns out there really wasn't any helpful information. The train was down for an unforeseen amount of time. Could be 12 when it was back up? Or 3? or maybe 5? Who knew? And then they were thinking/trying to organize buses to get people to Italy, but had nothing settled yet. To summarize, we were on our own. After some contemplating and debating we elected to get an Uber to take us to the first train station in Italy. It took MANY, MANY, MANY tries, but we finally caught an Uber. It turned out to be a niiiice Mercedes sedan

It turned out to be fun way to go to the train station. Got to see some different scenery and it was a smooth ride. Once in Italy, we exchanged our tickets for new ones to Milan. We ended up getting to Milan in mid-afternoon. After walking to the AirBnB and dropping of the bags, we decided to go explore Milan some. We found the closest metro station and hopped a train *gasp* to Duomo di Milano, which is one of the largest cathedrals in Italy (and Europe).

View from our Milan flat.

Duomo di Milano

Right next to the Duomo di Milano is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the oldest active shopping mall in Italy. It is definitely NOT like any other mall that I have seen. The architecture was something else. But once again, we found some delicious gelato.