After posting yesterday, we were still bored, so we went for yet another walk, picking a different street to go down.
We didn’t go far before we found a supermarket, an actual supermarket, not just a fruit stand that sells canned goods and sodas. We went in, just to browse the odd brands and products, most were American brands like Coke and Nestlè. There are only a few drinks in this country, Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, Fanta Orange, and some various teas, waters, and beers. In fact, I haven’t seen any other product that Pepsi sells.
Since there weren’t many restaurants nearby, we had the idea of just cooking something at the hostel. We bought some pasta and sauce. What we didn’t notice is that the sauce was just a tomato sauce, no spices, no herbs, no nothing. There wasn’t anything at the hostel that we could add to it, either.
Never the less, it was fulfilling, if not great. At least it was Italian.
As we were finishing up, a man came in who was there to clean up. He had great English and was friendly. He said he would look into the food tours, but we didn’t ever hear back about that.
Paid parking started at 9am, so we had to leave before that, arriving at the Milan hostel about 10. I found a free spot right outside the door, and we went in to check in, but that wasn’t until 2. Luckily, they would let us leave our baggage there while I returned the car.
As I was looking at the GPS for the Points Of Interest for the airport, I notice Hertz has all their locations already in there, so I set it for the airport Hertz. I thought that would be a good way to find the rental location, but I was wrong. It took us down a straight way, then a U-turn back about 100 yards or so, then said it was right in the median, which was empty. I only found it by happenstance, down a different road entirely.
We then had to catch a bus into town, luckily I had already pulled up a route from Google Maps. I was also able to follow along on my iPad on an offline Milan map. We had to get off to transfer to another bus, but mom decided we had time to kill, so we walked up the road, browsing the neighborhood.
A pastry shop at the end our block taunted us, so we had to get some cannoli. For research purposes only, of course.
And it was still hours before check in.
These late check in times are killing my schedule. We haven’t been able to do anything but walk around the area, so no pictures today either.
As we sat in the lobby, a huge group of kids came in, at least 40. Likely it was a field trip to the Expo. They were some of the noisiest bunch I had seen. Luckily they were processed and sent to their rooms, far from ours. Yet again, we are stuck up on the 3rd floor, without an elevator this time, so we have to lug our bags all the way up and down.
It is a six-person mixed-gender room, two of the beds are so far empty, hopefully they stay that way. The other two beds have girls things on and around them, so apparently I’m the rooster in the hen house tonight.
We ate dinner sitting in a park watching the little kids play on the equipment.
It is now just after 6 and I am already considering bed. God, I’m getting old.
At least from here on, we should be fairly busy everyday.
Tomorrow, we will finally get to go to the Expo, the whole purpose of the trip.