Milan and Como!

The amazing shopping center!
Ceele and I in front of the Duomo!

Inside the shopping center! (Prada!!)

Castello Sforzesco

Fountain in front of Castello Sforzesco.

Cute chairs in the park!

George's Villa.

Shopping streets in Bellagio!

Lake Como!

The lake again!

Fairy ride back!

Me and Ceele :)

Ceele and I out in Milan!

Buongiorno! Well I didn’t think things could get much better after a weekend in Nice, but I was wrong. I had the most amazing weekend in Milan! This weekend I traveled with Ceele, Taylor, Cindy, Kimber, Chase, Ryan, and Adrian. It was so much fun! We left Friday morning and had a three hour train ride straight to Milan. As soon as we got off the train, we realized our new challenge. We were no longer in a French speaking part of Europe and unless Italy recently changed their national language to Spanish or English, I knew we were in big trouble. So we stood around for a good 20 minutes with blank stares on our faces trying to figure out the street names. Finally, Taylor decided to bust out her high school Italian and it worked like a charm! We eventually found our hostel and I man was it an experience. This hostel was actually run by a Chinese family who spoke pretty good English which was helpful. However, the entire place reeked of orange chicken and fried rice. Lucky for us, we did not spend much time there. We didn’t waste any time before we started walking the city trying to find the Duomo. I was also keeping my eye out for the shopping center that I visited with my family. I remember the first time I went to Milan, we only had a couple hours there and we got dropped off right in front of this giant, covered, designer-store heaven. It was where I got my first Prada bag. It was a magical day. So magical, in fact, that I never even noticed the Duomo was right next to it. But I didn’t miss it this time. It was absolutely stunning. The entire thing is covered in statues and is layered all the way up. The inside was amazing too. The entire floor was inlayed marble and each column had different sculptures at the top. The stained windows at the back were all so bright and so detailed. What I did not like about the Duomo was the amount of pigeons that filled the square. I was terrified the entire time! This guy tried to get me to take these seeds in my hand so they would come all over me! I don’t think so! But Ceele did it! I felt so bad for the poor girl. After the Duomo, we ventured over to this old castle that was so amazing! It is called Castello Sforzesco. It had this beautiful fountain in front of it and had all of these great museums inside of them. Behind the castle was a beautiful park filled with runners, trees, ponds, bridges, and park benches. They had this adorable mini amphitheatre that had chairs put into the stone where seats should be. That night, we found a great and cheap pizzeria and got to bed early to get ready for the next big day ahead of us.
On Saturday, Ceele and I decided to break off and take a day trip to Lake Como. At first, we were a little nervous to go out on our own, but I have never been more proud of us. We found our way to the train station, bought our tickets, got on the right train, got off in Como, found the lake, bought fairy tickets to Bellagio, got on the fairy to come back, bought train tickets back to Milan, and took the Metro from the train station to the hotel. And everything was in Italian! But Lake Como was absolutely breathtaking. The gorgeous villas and quaint towns surrounding the lake made everything picture perfect. George wasn’t in at his villa this time, but he left the key under the mat for us. We had beautiful weather too! Except we learned very quickly that wearing shorts out in public is not as common in Italy as it is in California. Every single person we walked by looked us both up and down like we were crazy! I have never got so many death stares in my life. Bellagio was absolutely amazing. It was such a beautiful town and I am so glad I got to visit. All of the cobblestone roads had stairways off of them leading to shops on both sides. They had the most beautiful silk and cashmere scarves that were made in Italy. They also had amazing leather products! Unfortunately, I realized that I was a traveling college student who paid for the ticket out to Bellagio and had to eat lunch so no scarves for now. But it still was an amazing trip! When we got back to Milan that night, Ceele and I decided to head out for a nice dinner. Another cultural difference is that no one goes out until extremely late! We didn’t leave for dinner until around 10 because most restaurants stay open till about 1 am and then everyone leaves the restaurants and heads the bars around 1 and to the clubs around 2! Such a crazy night life! But once again, we didn’t make it out that late. We were extremely tired so after we got a peak at the night life, we headed in just as everything was getting started. Still, such an amazing day!
Sunday, our train didn’t leave till 2, so we enjoyed the morning eating more gelato and exploring Milan before heading back to Lausanne. Another amazing weekend! Ciao!

Nice!

On the train ride there!
Chase, me, Ceele, and Nathan in front of the fountain.


Another beautiful fountain!

On our way out for the night!

At the beach!

Me and Ceele!

Nice!

Flower market!

Amazing flowers!

Flower ice cream!

Nice at night!

Last night out!

Well, I just got back from my first weekend trip and it was amazing! Me and four friends (Ceele, Kimber, Nathan, and Chase) left Friday morning on a 7:15 train and were off to Geneva to make our first transfer. Surprisingly, the first transfer was pretty smooth! Well, at least that’s what we thought until we were yelled at by a bunch of angry French people. Apparently, we were in the right seats, but in the wrong car! After that situation got settled, it was smooth sailing all the way to Nice. When we arrived in Nice, we decided to find our hostel first. Yes. That is correct. A hostel. Even though I was extremely nervous about it, it turned out to pretty nice. Yes, there were some questionable stains on the carpet, but it had its own bathroom and shower and was right in the middle of everything. We then went to a small café on one of the main shopping strips. I was so excited to see a bowl of pasta for 7 dollars! Then I realized that we were now on the Euro making everything suddenly much more expensive. After lunch, we decided to walk around Nice and ended up finding two beautiful fountains! Nice is so amazing! It’s so exotic but still very European. It’s like the Hawaii of Europe! The second half of our group (Taylor, Cindy, and Rachelle) came in on a train about three hours later. Once they came in, we walked around a little longer then went and got ready for dinner. We walked into Old Town and found a strip of amazing restaurants. Everyone was sitting outside and enjoying long dinners and conversation. Of course, the place we decide on is the American Bar. However, it turned out to be a lot of fun. We all had a great time and some American classics!
Saturday, we got an early start and headed out to the beach. Unlike our beaches back home, there are rocks everywhere. They replace the sand. So lying out became very interesting. But did that stop me from falling asleep? Definitely not. After it warmed up a little bit, we decided to finally go for a swim in the Mediterranean. It was amazing! The water is so blue and clear and not too cold either! It was almost a little too clear. It was so freaky being able to see the bottom of the sea. After the beach, we decided to go through all of the markets. They were so amazing! Nice is famous for having one of the most beautiful flower markets ever! (Mom and Grandpa, you would have loved it!) Everything was so bright and colorful. As soon as you walked up, the incredible smells were overwhelming. So beautiful! We then walked down the strip by the beach until we found this amazing gelato shop! Not only did it taste amazing, but when you order it on a cone, they shape your ice cream into a flower! It was so delicious and so cute! After a long day of walking around, we went and got ready for a nice dinner down in Old Town. We ate at this amazing restaurant with a great environment. We also had such great weather! It was nine o’clock at night and we were sitting outside in jeans and tank tops! After dinner, we walked down to this bar that I had read about in my travel book. It said that there was a bar upstairs and a dance floor downstairs. So naturally, when we got there, I went searching for the dance floor downstairs. After searching for the stairs, Ceele pointed out to me the 3 steps that lead down to a separate section of the building with two long picnic tables and a DJ booth. Little did we know how packed it would get later in the night. It ended up being the highlight of my trip to Nice. We met tons of people from all over Europe and had a great time! First weekend of travel = success!!