MILAN

Milan was a quick stop and our last day with the whole group. Our first night we went out to the Duomo area in search of food. Silly us, of course we weren't going to find a reasonably-priced restaurant within any close proximity to Gucci, Prada, Dior, etc., so we ended up getting in quite the tour of the shopping district before settling for a (wait for it, wait for it...) pasta restaurant to eat at.

We spent the next day walking through the main district, gawking at the prices at most of the stores, and finding a few good bargains (North Face Milan shirt, yes!)

Then the trouble started. We went to the train station to catch a bus to the airport. As we got on, I was feeling really uneasy, and I had a tough time relaxing the entire way there. When we arrived, we discovered that we were at the wrong airport. There was about 2 and a half hours until our flight and we were "an hour and a half - two hours" away from the correct airport!

I found a woman working for one of the bus companies, and the last bus of the day had already left for the the other airport, but she listened to our predicament, made a few calls, and by some stroke of luck, the driver turned around to come pick up the five of us. And he knew we were in a hurry, so he stepped on it. (The funny part was that our flight ended up getting delayed a half hour, so we really made it to the correct airport in PLENTY of time! Still a bit stressful though.)

Then, when we got to the airport in Madrid, we all had to split up. Andy and I had a great plan to take the metro to the train station right away before the metro shut down and wait there for a few hours till we could get the first train to Oviedo. Turns out, the train station was closed for the night by the tine we got there, so we ended up sitting outside playing card games until it re-opened at 5am. (Don't worry, mom and dad, it was only 3 1/2 hours and really, really not as sketch as it sounds!!)

Then, we had to hop a train to a different train station where we had to stand in line with a grumpy teller whose response to everyone in line was either that he didn't understand the language they were trying to speak (so I stepped in to do a little translating) or that he could neither help the customer, nor direct them to someone who could. Everyone was thinking it, but finally a guy in line started totally ripping on the guy about how horribly unhelpful he was being to everyone in line and how he couldn't believe his hard-earned money was going to help pay this guys wages, etc. It got a little nasty and there was a threat to call the police...but finally we were able to talk to someone else and get our tickets for Oviedo squared away.

But wait, the adventure continues...

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