Day 5 (Milan and Venice)

On Tuesday, we had a few hours in Milan before we needed to catch our train to Venice.  Honestly, we didn't really know what to do in Milan, so we decided to head downtown to see the Duomo.  I always love going to a city that has a good metro system and Milan's was great.  It only took us a few minutes to ride the train with the rest of the commuters downtown.

 

The Duomo was Gothic and beautiful.  The square in front of it is one of the biggest tourist places in the city and Stephanie quickly found herself prey to one of the African men who hang out in the square looking for unsuspecting tourists.  He placed a bracelet on her arm while saying "Africa".  He then proceeded to ask her for money.  Throughout the day we saw this same pattern repeated for other tourists -- Oftentimes offering seed to feed the pigeons with.

 

 

At the Duomo, you can pay 7 Euros to climb to the roof.  It's quite a few steps, but the view from the top is pretty incredible.

 

Flying buttresses galore!

When we got to the top of the roof, we decided to let Henry climb around a little bit.  Don't worry, the roof wasn't that steep.

 

The roof, however, was quite dirty.  Good thing the dirt is historic.

Across from the Duomo is a semi-outdoor mall the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.  The place was a little high class for my taste -- I kept looking for the food court.

 

One cool thing about Milan is that they have the public fountains everywhere.  They also serve many uses including a dog's drinking bowl.

After visiting the Duomo, we headed to the train station to catch our train to Venice.  The train was great.  It wasn't very crowded so we basically got 8 seats for the 3 of us.  Plenty of place to stretch out.  Honestly, I can't remember why Henry has his shirt off.

 

Once we arrived in Venice, it was pretty unreal.  The place was mobbed with tourists, and we were 3 of them.  We found a place to stay through airbnb.  We were staying with a woman named Lola who lived just a few minutes from St. Marks Square in Venice.  Once we arrived in Venice, we took a Vaporetto, which is a water bus to Accademia Bridge.  Our apartment was just a few minutes walk away from the bridge.

Here is the entrance to our apartment.

 After meeting our host and getting settled in, we gave Henry some time to take a nap.

After Henry woke up we decided to explore the city a little bit.  First stop: Gelato.

Our first night was one of our favorite in Venice.  We just tried to get lost exploring a less trafficked part of the city.

We also gave Henry some time to crawl and explore a church.