Last night’s sleep was the best I’ve had so far since I got here. For one, yesterday I was totally knocked out after the looooong walk to duomo, around duomo and back to hotel. Although my body had a good rest, my feet still feels tired like I could use a good foot massage. As I was having breakfast (the hotel had same menu as yesterday) in the hotel, Marlo sent me another text message telling me that they’re on their way here from Riva del Garda and will be arriving in an hour’s time. They will only be staying in Milan for a day because tomorrow they are Saudi bound. Come to think of it, if my original itinerary has not been cancelled then I wouldn’t have enjoyed my Italy trip for they have spent most of the time in Riva del Garda and I would be watching the rather tedious choir competition. I mean, I joined the entourage so I can tour Italy and who’s heard of Riva del Garda anyway? It was indeed a blessing in disguise, for I will be staying back for two more days and I could still see Rome . As they say “you haven’t been to Italy if you haven’t gone to Rome ” and besides; good friend, officemate, adviser, pastor and most of all brother in Christ Emmaus Trekker (who’s had quite a couple of mentions in this entire blog already. I think I should start charging him with advertising fees plus more for the nice introductions! LOL) has been raving about it in the text messages he’s been sending me. In this entire trip he’s become an OTA (over the air) tourist guide cum booking agent- accross the miles! Which calls to mind that I had to retrieve my return e-ticket, in the email he sent me. After having breakfast, I asked the guy at the frontdesk if there are internet cafés around. Apparently there is only one but from the directions he gave me, it seemed rather far so I settled for the “internet point” in the hotel lobby. It is only payable by swiping your credit card and the entire use (which took only about 5 mins) retrieval and printing 1 page costed me an agonizing 17 Euros- as agonizing as the “golden corns” for the pigeons. Moments later, a bus came to a halt in front of the hotel and I knew it was the choir group. All 18 people crowded the small hotel lobby and were assigned their rooms. I have paid for my room until today so I have to transfer to a shared room with 2 of them as per the original booking we had. They told me that they won silver in the folklore category of the competition and I was like “Wow! That’s really great” I pretended to be ecstatic like they just won a Grammy or something for whatever its worth. We all went to the place of the sister of one of the members who’s been in Milan for about 6 years now where she prepared pork sinigang and oven-baked chicken for lunch. Afterwhich, some opted to stay back in the hotel because they really didn’t have money while others went to Duomo as for Marlo, Joey (another member) and I decided to take a bus to
Foxtown Mall at Mendrissio, Switzerland
Switzerland where the closest gateway would be Mendrissio. The ride on the
I just had to take a photo of myself with a Swiss flag no matter what!
doubledecker was fun and it took only about an hour until we got to Mendrissio. The return trip as mentioned in our bigglieta (ticket) was too soon that we didn’t have time to go to Luggano- a tourist spot in Switzerland . We just went to Foxtown mall and did hours of window and actual shopping and had a heavy snack of pizza- I wasn’t able to finish mine because it was too large for a single slice. While waiting for the bus we spent the rest of the time taking pictures around the place until it was time for the bus to depart. On the way back, I was telling them about the Castello and the Duomo so when we arrived Milan , I became their tourist guide to those places. The Piazza was less busy at night (fewer tourists and zero pigeons!) and like myself, they were amazed at the sight of the Duomo. As usual we took each other’s picture specially at the nearby Castello which even looked lovelier at night! We had dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant where we ate pasta and lamb chops with red wine on the side before taking the night off. Tomorrow noon they will be departing to Saudi Arabia and I’ll be on my own to Rome .
"As usual we took each other’s picture specially at the nearby Castello which even looked lovelier at night!"
