Milan, May 28, 2023
May 30th, 2023 by rallyadmin
Soon enough (it’s really amazing how long 81/2 hours in economy seating and how short the same time is in business) we’re landing in Milan. It’s sunny and a nice 72° F at the airport and the fewer passengers make de-planing a lot faster than usual.
The long hike to customs. Face recognition to compare with the passport photo. (Face recognition, much to the dismay of the TV crime series, still not ready for prime time.) The human immigration officer only takes the passport without looking at any of the info, finds an open page, stamps the page and we’re off to baggage claim. There, we finally get back to earth and wait for the industry standard 30 minutes for our bags to show up. But they do show up. Huzzah! Off to Milan proper.
We have a rental car booked but the pickup is scheduled for tomorrow, the 29th. It didn’t seem like a good idea to take the car and them try to find somewhere to park it for the night in an Italian city known to be problematic for car parking. The options are take the rental and deal with the parking issue or get a taxi which is between $155 and $150 depending on waiting in the taxi queue or getting a dedicated driver or take the train to Milan Centrale for € 13 (~$14.50). The train wins.
It’s bit of a hike but we find the platform, get some help from a lovely Italian woman buying tickets at a kiosk and even get a couple of seats together on he train. I ask to the other passengers already on the train if this is the right train. It is and we settle in for the 50 minute train ride to Milan Centrale.
We’re sitting across from a couple from St. Louis who are going to visit their son who is studying in Verona for the summer. They look exhausted. They tell us that their flight on Delta out of Atlanta direct to Milan was canceled and replaced with a different flight a day later through Boston and Amsterdam to Milan. (That sounds very much like my disastrous flight to Madrid through JFK earlier this year that was screwed by the FAA computer crash. It also was replaced by a flight through Boston and Amsterdam.)
We have a nice chat for the ride to Milan. They are scurrying to find another train to Verona to catch up with their son. We just have to find a taxi to our hotel which is only a few kms from the rail station but we (my right knee (WTF) and I are in no shape to walk 5 kms dragging my roller. Out to the taxi stand (damn, this is a huge station) and wait in the ridiculously long queue. But things move along fairly quickly and in about 15 minutes we’re in a taxi and 10 minutes later we’re at the hotel.
The hotel is a small boutique hotel a few blocks from the Duomo. It’s the usual Euro boutique hotel: a floor of an older apartment building where the apartment has been chopped in to group of small rooms. They aren’t terribly scenic but the are very convenient and very inexpensive for where they are located. This hotel, Enjoy Duomo is exactly to type and I love them. Of course there are always little quirks and we have to call the contact number to find out how to get to the room but, in the end, it all works out and we get a small but very clean and serviceable hotel room within view of the Duomo. I highly recommend it.
We check in, get settled, clean up and promptly head out to see the Doumo which is the cathedral of Milan. It’s a magnificent structure with spires everywhere that dominate the local skyline. We find out way to piazza in front of the structure and finally the queue for tickets. But we are too late. There are no more tickets available for today.
Next up is a small museum dedicated to the machines that Leonardo Da Vinci had designed and may have actually built. It’s just a few blocks away, Google Maps leads on a circuitous track that has us circling another piazza and, again as usual, blithely stating we are here when we can’t find the museum. We walk all around the plaza and eventually ask a couple of police officers for directions just as we realize that we are almost standing in front of the museum. Google Maps 1, us 0.
The museum is really a little gem. There are models of all of the different devices that Da Vinci either actually built or only theorized. The models range from his different war machines to his “robots to his flying machines. And there is a digital recovery of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. This isn’t the original. It’s a digital reconstruction and renovation of the original but it is well worth the visit..
Heading back to the hotel we stop for dinner. It’s a good but very touristy and expensive meal but we’re getting too tired to search for something better. Back to the hotel and end for the night/
Well not quite. Clemo, my lunatic Brit traveling bud called and wants to talk about the route book for next year’s Banjul run. But the Indy 500 is running and he’s watching it in the UK and I’m watching it on the laptop using a VPN to masquerade as a US located computer. (Peacock limits us (not very well, I might add) to connections only in the States. The VPN connections fakes that as a connection in Orlando. It works but buffers badly.
Eventually the race ends (3 red flags in the last 15 laps) I Clemo and I have a lovely hour long Whatsapp chat. He’s trying to work out changes for the next year’s Banjul Challenge and he needed to bounce some ideas for next year’s Challenge and to remember so details from this year’s challenge.
It was great doing the video chat with Clemo. He’s sch a fine mat and he’s so dedicated to making these challenges fun and exciting. He’s the perfect person for these adventures.
Finally, we sign off and it’s time to call it a day, a very long day. Tomorrow, the yurt in Rapallo.
Obi-wan
