Lunedi

Monday morning we woke up really early to catch the 7.30 train from Asti to Tortona and then Tortona to Milano. Eugen came with us! The train station in Milan was gorgeous! It was huge and old and beautiful. We stopped at McDonalds to use the bathrooms... there are McDonaldses everywhere you look in Italy. It's kind of sad. Anywho, it was a beautiful day, and we headed to Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II-- the world's oldest shopping mall! The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a covered double arcade formed of two glass-vaulted arcades at right angles intersecting in an octagon; it connects Piazza della scala and Piazza del Duomo. Inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Named after Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of united Italy, it was originally designed in 1861 and built by Giuseppe Mengoni between 1865 and 1877. More than 120 years after its inauguration, the four-story arcade includes elegant shops selling most things from haute couture to books, as well as restaurants, cafés and bars. We browsed the Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton shops, and then we went to see the Piazza del Duomo. Eugen fed pigeons in the piazza, and we went into the big beautiful church. Duomo di Milano is the cathedral church of Milan. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Milan, currently Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi. Built from the late 14th well into the 19th century, the Duomo di Milano is one of the world's largest churches, second in size within Italy only to Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and the second largest Gothic cathedral in the world, after the Cathedral of Seville in Spain.

After a quick stop at the tourist information shop, we went back to Piazza della Scala to enjoy our sandwiches. We went inside the Teatro della Scala and learned about a famous Greek-American soprano that sang there. The Teatro alla Scala (or La Scala, as it is known), in Milan, Italy, is one of the world's most famous opera houses. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778. The theatre was breathtaking... we felt like Abe Lincoln or Julia Roberts. It was beautiful!

After the theatre, we returned to Piazza della Scala for another panino (sandwich). Eugen called his friend Paolo that lived in Milan, and he left to meet him. Caitlin, Elizabeth and I walked to the Olona River to take pictures, and stopped by a little stream to eat our last sandwiches. We window shopped for awhile, and I bought an Audrey Hepburn bag at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. One of my favorite things about Italian cities is that, amongst all the craziness of a huge metropolitan city, on nearly every street you can turn down an alley and find little Italian apartments secluded from the city. Many have fountians and balconies... They're so adorble. We also went to see the Colonne di San Lorenzo-- the best-known Roman ruin in Milan. It is located in front of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. It is a square with a row of columns on either side, which were taken from a temple or public bath house dating from the 2nd century. The columns were moved to their current location sometime in the 4th century.

Eugen called us, so we went to meet him, Paolo, and his friends at a park, but we couldn't find them or get a hold of them. So, we just sat on a park bench, rested, people watched, and chatted. I had lasagna at the restaurant we stopped at on the way back to the train station where we met Eugen and Paolo (who was DROP DEAD GORGEOUS, by the way... like MANY of the Italian men we saw in Milano and all over Italy). Eugen talked non-stop on the train on the way back; he told us the story of Hansel and Gretl in German and taught us about facts about the world. He tried to teach us the German alphabet, but we were hopeless. We couldn't even SAY the letters!

Once we got back to the train station in Asti, Caitlin's dad Paolo picked us up and we went back to the house to have dinner with the fam (minus Giusi). We had bowtie noodles, tomato and basil sauce, pineapple juice, bread, vegetables and some kind of weird meatballs. After some more tiramisu and moscato (this time a bit stronger) for dessert, we did some more chatting and showered before bed...