Day 89...Gelati Italia - 23rd September

Woke up a bit earlier today, packed up and legged it back to the car which we had parked when we first arrived. The car park played some nice music, so our car wasn't lonely. haha.

Bought our last French pastries on the way, and then we headed straight for Italy. The roads were windy and sometimes extremely high up as we drove over valleys, then plunged into mountain tunnels. It reminded Nate of Need for Speed. Although the roads were windy, they were still 4 lanes and people were driving stupidly fast. I couldn't drive it, so ate a French vanilla slice and watched Nate tackle it instead. The moment we saw the sign for Italy - bam! The traffic language changed. Straight to the Italian language. It got even more confusing as the toll road colour swapped to green, when it was blue in France. We had to buy a map asap.

After figuring ourselves out we drove straight to Milan and got there around 4-5pm. For a city of fashion, the buildings were tired and covered in grafitti. It was a confusing bitch to get into as well, with one way streets and no signs for the train station. We eventually found the central train station, but couldn't find the TIC everywhere. Nate got directed to a million different sites but no luck. So we ended up having to drive around and ask people. The 1 stars were asking $150 IF there was a cancellation - as they were all booked out! They said there were 3 conferences on this weekend, and the place was going nuts. 4 hours later, at around 9-10pm we eventually found a place that had a vacancy for 90 euro so we grabbed it. For a 1 star hotel it was damn nice. We heard they don't really do budget hotels here, so our room had its own bathroom and TV and it was very clean and tidy. We were buggered, so drove just down the street to a place that was packed with locals (they always know whats going on). It was a lovely Italian joint, crisp and classy. Nathan had his first Italian pizza and had to order blind as we forgot our phrasebook and didn't understand anything. I ordered gnocchi when ended up being some weird clear soup dish with gnocchi floating in it. Hm not the best. But the other dishes the guests were getting looked stunning. The Milanese - despite their crabby building exteriors - have very nice interiors. The Milanese themselves are almost always impeccably well groomed. I felt quite daggy!
Then we headed home for bed.

PS Italians are crazy drivers! They drive over lines, swerve crazily and merge where it suits them. They stop even less often for pedestrians than the other countries, and speed up through red lights. All regard for lanes disappear and we have no idea which lane we are in. Cutting people off is the rule too. Nathan figured out the formula they use for intersections:

Green = Go.
Orange = Speed up.
Red = Speed up and apply horn.

hee hee