Europe: part 8

Milan:

Brian wrote the next little part of our trip: We were nearly late to our train in Venice (I think Michelle needs to wake up two hours before its time to leave:) We made it to the station though and found out that it was a holiday so trains weren't leaving as often. We took the one an hour later, as it started raining.  We were on the train and the conductor came by asking for the reservation to be on the train. What?? So we ended up paying another 8€ a person to be on that train.  Oops. Turns out practically all trains to and from Milan require a reservation because of the high traffic of people coming through. While on the train, I tried to eat chocolate, but Michelle wouldn't let me because it was still morning.

In Milan we couldn't find the info stand in order to get to the airport an hour away so we could fly to Cyprus.  Eventually, we did make it to the busses and bought our tickets to get to the airport that night. In Italy I'm paranoid that someone will take advantage of us, so buying bus tickets to the airport was scary. We then walked to our hotel that we would be staying at the night we were planning to fly back from Cyprus (I cannot believe how messed up the streets are, even with my phone we got lost).  We found the hotel and with the help of google translation we were able to communicate with the front desk guy what we wanted.  We wanted to leave our bags there for a short while, then leave my backpack there until we checked in 3 days later.  Ryanair, the airline we were taking to Cyprus only allows 1 carry on bag, so we had to leave my backpack in Milan.  We bought two subway tickets and headed to the Duomo. When we came up from the subway, we were amazed to see the Duomo!

 Inside were awesome stained glass windows that depicted stories of Christ's life.  Here are just a few pictures we captured.

We got lunch at a café next to the duomo, pizza this time.  Michelle was having a great time in milan with the duomo and Gucci stores.

After walking around Milan for a while, we randomly found a castle thing. There were mobs of nigerians or something that grabbed Michelle's wrist and tied a piece of string around her telling her it was greetings from Africa wishing luck. They then stuck out their hand and asked for change. She didn't have any and asked the Nigerians to cut off the bracelet tie thing. They did not cut it off instead they cut their losses and left. 

We decided it was time to head back to our hostel and grab our luggage we needed for Cyprus so we could make the 4:45 bus to the bergamo airport. As we headed back. We got off at the wrong spot and had to wait for 5 minutes for the next train to arrive. When we got to our stop, we realized we were not going to make the 4:45 bus but would make the 5:15 instead. By the time we finally got back to the hostel where we left our luggage, it was 10 to 5. We got our luggage and quickly walked into the rain to get to our train which would get us to our bus. We got to the underground train and realized it would be another 8 minutes for the next train. Finally at about 5:08 we caught the train and rode it to the bus near the train station.

Michelle again with story of the trip time: Brian ran ahead to catch the bus before it left with 2 minutes to spare. I was left behind trying to also climb the stairs quickly with my luggage.  Our poor feet were still killing us! When I came to the top of the stairs Brian was nowhere in sight. I noticed familiar things in the train station from earlier that day and found the direction I needed to run to catch up with Brian. I began to run. Fast. As I was going around the corner, Brian came up behind me yelling are you sure the busses are this way? I went the other way! Lucky me I was right. We came around the corner and there was a line of busses. Brian ran ahead as I tried to run. I got to the bus that I thought Brian was getting on and he was nowhere in sight. Again. I frantically looked everywhere for him. Finally I spotted him three busses down waving me to hurry in the pouring rain. We made it! We both got on the bus with seconds to spare. When we got to the airport. We got off and everything went smoothly as we went through security and straight onto the bus which took us to our little Ryanair plane. We got on and our flight took off for cyprus. About 10 minutes up in the air they announced that they had all these delicious beverages on today's flight. I was excited and realized how thirsty I was. They then said beverage prices were listed on the back of the magazine they passed out. Brian and I decided to use the euro change we had to get a drink. It was 1,80 for a 7 up.  Which was about half the size of a normal American soda can. Can you say rip off? Ugh. I fell asleep on the flight and Brian read. We finally landed in Cyprus at 11:15   We went thru customs and opened the doors to see my parents sitting on the other side! We were thrilled and got hugs and we loaded in the car. Dad got in on the right side of the car where the Steering wheel was? Weird. They drive on the wrong side of the road. We got some good QC in as we drove 1.5 hours to their flat in Larnica.  We got to their home and went straight to bed.