Milan

  Milan, Lombardy, Italy
Saturday, June 28, 2008

Lunch at Biffi's

Thursday 26th June

Alison: We were up early to be taken by Andrea to the train station half an hour away. It was sad to farewell everyone when they had taken such good care of us with their amazing hospitality, but we were also looking forward to reaching Milan and seeing Mike's parents and my mum soon.

The train arrived in Milan at 11.00 and we had an arrangement to meet John and Alex at 12.00 in Biffi's Restaurant in the Victor Emmanuele Building, so that gave us an hour to find a hotel to stay, drop the bags and get to them...

Enjoying catching up with John and Alex

Amazingly, we made it very efficiently, with the people at the Tourist Bureau being very helpful and despite a long queue for the taxi we reached the Mercure Hotel, dropped our things and at 12.15 were sitting down in the stunning surroundings of central Milan, chatting excitedly to Pops and Dangy.  

After a very yummy lunch and lovely exchanges of news we wandered into the stunning Milan Cathedral or Duomo, not surprisingly nicknamed by locals as 'the wedding cake' and did a bit of shopping with them in the nearby Rinascente Department store where I bought a lovely summer linen dress and then farewelled them as they were off to Greece where John was giving a lecture. Then we caught a taxi back to the hotel and tried unsuccessfully to cool down - the hotel air conditioning not being quite up to the incredibly hot and sticky weather. Later we wandered down the street for a pizza at a nearby café and then headed happily off to bed. 

Looking at it from the outside

Mum was meant to arrive on Friday, so imagine my dismay when she left us a message saying that the Qantas Engineers in Sydney were on strike and her plane couldn't go until the next morning. This meant she would miss her connection in Japan, so we weren't sure when she'd arrive. Unfortunately as mobile phones generally don't work in Japan, she was unable to receive all our messages and unable to communicate with us! We just had to hope we'd be able to make contact some time soon.

Amazing stained glass windows in Milan Duomo

Mike:        The chance to see Mum and Dad again was a fabulous feeling.  It had been been purely by chance that I had realized, on replaying a phone message from Dad, that they would fly out the evening of the day we got there, thus quick lunch booking was made and all was sorted. 
The central square and Duomo of Milan is a quite magnificent sight, so we met them there in fine spirits under a beautiful blue sky, and proceeded to lunch at a local icon called Biffis. The kids always looove to see them, so they were bubbling over as we all shared tales of our recent adventures.   The food was great, we decided one bottle of  the pinot grigio was just not quite enough (!)..  and the bill when presented was not modest this being Milan!.. Fortunately for us Dad had said this was one on them, as we had shouted Browns of London, a good swap for us by any measure!  

Inthe Victor Emmanuele Building

 

Friday 27th June

View from our window towards the Duomo

Alison: I really needed a haircut and colour as about an inch of grey was showing, so I wandered off to the hairdresser with Rachel and Tom in tow, leaving Mike with his computer. They did a good job with my hair, not quite matching the previous colour but coming up with a pretty close version that looked very natural, and a nice cut. Rachel got hers trimmed too, but Tom wasn't interested.

Later in the day I took the kids into the Piazza by the Duomo to buy bras and also look for a game for Tom's DS Lite. We found a great Electrical Store where Tom finally made a decision on a good game and as we were leaving we found a great camera for Rachel.

The 'wedding cake' in all its glory

She had been promised one for her birthday and when we saw a great little Canon Cybershot on special for 99 Euros it seemed too good to miss. The only problem was that when we went to pay for it, my new credit card was not accepted - very strange!  We wandered out to a bank but it wouldn't work there either, and finally found a Swiss Bank that would give us some cash so that we could go back and pay for it. Then we walked all the way back to the hotel in the heat, window shopping as we went.

University Building near where we ate dinner

That night, as we were unable to pick up Mum from the airport as planned, we went to a nice restaurant near the university that was recommended by John and Alex where we had a lovely meal and then walked back through the lovely Milanese streets.  I had a bit of a sleepless night worrying how we were going to get into contact with Mum as we had to leave for Verona the next day to stay with our friends Paulo and Jenny, and would be unable to meet Mum at the airport. She still hadn't contacted us by the next morning, so we had to just hope she would have her phone turned on when she arrived in Milan and we would keep ringing it from about the time she was due to arrive.

Walking home from dinner

Rachel: We arrived on Tuesday in Milan to meet our grandparents Dangy and Pops at a restaurant called Biffi's where we had booked a table because it was so busy. It was a really nice restaurant with fabulous food. We told them about what we had done since we saw them in London and then we headed off because they had to go and catch a plane. Next day Mama was meant to arrive but she was delayed by a strike in Sydney. We went to a big shop called Rhinascente where my mum got a dress. Tom had been promised he could get a DS game so we went to an electrical store and found him a game he liked. Then we saw a Canon Cyber Shot for 99 Euros. We had been looking for a camera for my birthday for ages so we looked at the features and decided to get a 2 gig memory card and camera case. The zoom was amazing as it was a cheaper camera than Mum's but had a better zoom. We also decided to get a haircut as both Mum and I needed one. I got a little trim but my mum got a full colour and cut which took about two hours. 

Tom:   It was really nice seeing our grandparents Dangi and Pops who live in Sydney again. They travel around the world a lot like we do, so we saw them before in London and that was really great too.  When we settled down we went to a place called Biffis for lunch.   It was one of the most expensive meals we have had on this entire trip, and the lunch was really nice.  I has gnocchi and Pops had fresh tomatoes.
After that we went to a department store and found a camera for Rachels birthday, as well as a DS game for me. At the cashier Mum tried to pay Visa but then it is a big story...  because it didnt work, since there was a blackout, so we went to a bank that someone else helped us get into, but the Visa still didnt work there. Then we went to another Swiss bank and finally it worked, so we went back to the store and paid them cash instead of Visa and got all our stuff.