July 21, 2008

We are sans garcons, as they have trounced off to the Motherland of Hungary, and won't be home, and by home I mean Nice, until tomorrow night. We are hopeful they will be on time, as we all have tickets to see Leonard Cohen at the Nice Jazz Festival tomorrow night. 

Marlisse and I got back from a fun-filled and busy trip to Milan. We started our journey by witnessing a train passenger having her finger crushed by a train door on our way to Italy. I must say that put us off our brie and baguette. We volunteered one of our ice bottles of water so that the poor girl could get some relief, and we ate our way to Milan, six hours later, as the train was not on time, of course. Oh, Italy. After finding Duomo, an imposing and regal square with an amazing church that took 500 years to build, and is the third largest Catholic church in Europe, (Joey would be jealous)we found our beautiful hotel, where they upgraded our room to a suite.

 We then fast-walked to the center to buy a ticket to La Boheme at La Scala for the next evening. I was amazed that we were lucky to get one of the last sets of tickets to the world's premium opera house. And my favourite opera. We ate a good dinner of pasta, bruschetta, pizza and chianti, and called it a night, after an intense photo shoot in our hotel housecoats, on our upgraded beds and in our upgraded sheets. Grazie, Italy.

The next morning, we moved hotels, and got another upgrade. Another photo shoot in hotel housecoats. The hotels in this city are rather amazing. We then bought tickets to Seraville, the Italian outlet malls, and took the bus tour close to Genoa, which took 1.5 hours. Planning to buy our way to the opera that evening, we were looking  for Italian designer clothing. After 5 hours and much shopping, we came away with American shoes and 2 bras. This did not bode well for opera wear.

We attended the opera in stinky shopping clothes, and it was an amazing experience but perhaps not for the patrons who had to sit next to us and smell us. The house was accoustically perfect and the opera was gorgeous. We felt blessed to have been able to attend.

The next morning, we went on a tour to see Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." It was fantastic, and one of the highlights of the trip thus far. We visited the castle, the La Scala Museum, Duomo and had a bus ride through the city. When we finished the bus tour, we high-tailed it to the railway station for our 3 p.m. tickets back to Nice. An exhausting but culturally incredible 2 days. When we got to Ventimiglia, Italy, we were basically told to vacate the train, even though we had a direct train to Nice. We found a connection in Ventimiglia, and got home late, yet again. Oh, Italy.

Next day was going to be a chill beach day, but I seem to get bored after 2 hours on a beach. At the last minute, Marlisse and I decided to leave the beach and get on a bus for Monaco for one euro. Clearly it was time to pay our respects to Princess Grace et all. Monaco, 45 minutes later, was gorgeous and clean and fun. We gambled at the Casino, built by Charles Garnier, ate chi chi tarts and pastries, walked the pier, and then hightailed it to the castle. We decided to mix up our public transit options and took the train home to Nice. All in all, another day in Paradise.

Adieu for now.