26 March 2010: Friday

Today was day one of our Spring Break.  Bethany, Deanne, Jess, and I all left early this morning...at 2 am...and took a taxi to Eastmidlands airport.  The drive there was just over two hours, so I ended up sleeping for a little while.  We got to the airport and checked at around four in the morning.  After going through security, we all just sat in a little cafe because our flight wasn't boarding for another hour.  The boarding for our flight started at around six.  Once I sat down in the plane, I pretty much passed out.  I was super tired because I had only taken a two hour nap earlier that night.  But I did wake up at one point during our flight and we were flying over Zurich, Germany and it was really really pretty.  I had a nice view of the mountains.  We landed and got through customs...we had to answer random questions about America that the Italian security guards thought would be fun to ask us, the questions were based on the pictures in our passport books, like the picture of Mt. Rushmore for example.  From the airport we took a bus to the city center...oh we were in Milan, Italy.  After getting off the bus, we got onto the subway and took that to our hostel.  Then we had to climb 97 stairs...yes we counted...up to the floor that our hostel was on.  Once we got up there, we encountered some confusions and for a few minutes it seemed that we would have no where to stay for the night.  But thankfully, things worked out and we got a room.  So we left our stuff in the hostel and went back down the 97 stairs to find something to eat.  We found a little grocery store down the street, so we had baguettes and nutella for lunch.  Once we were done eating, we were bored because we didn't know what to do.  So I went back to the hostel to get my camera and to get the map and list of what to do, because it had been my job to look up things to see in Milan.  We got on the subway and went to the Piazza del Duomo.  Once we got off the subway, we started getting excited because there was a giant Cathedral in the piazza and the piazza itself was really cool.  It looked more along the lines of what we had expected to see while traveling in Italy.  So the first thing we did was go into the Cathedral, which is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe.  The outside of the cathedral was really cool and had lots of carvings on it.  And then we went inside. It was so huge in there.  The ceilings and arches were really high.  And all the stained glass was very bright and not faded at all which was great.  I was especially excited because everyone was taking pictures even though there had been a sign outside that had said not pictures.  So I got some nice pictures of the inside of the cathedral.  Oh and while we were inside it, the bells started chiming, so you could hear the reverberation of the bells in the cathedral, which was super cool.  We all wandered around the cathedral for a while and took pictures,  then we went back outside.  We walked around the Piazza...oh piazza means square in English.  We walked in the Gallaria Vittorio Emanuele II, which was basically an enclosed plaza...the roof was glass...that had lots of cafes and high end shops, like Prada.  After wandering around there for a while, we wandered up the street to the Castle Sforesco.  When we got there, there were a bunch of soldiers marching down the street.  We think there might have been something going on, but we didn't really stick around to find out because we were all kind of worn down by that point because none of us had really slept any the night before.  So we went back to the hostel and ended up taking a two to three hour nap.  After we woke up, it was time for dinner.  So we wandered around the neighborhood and ended up finding a cute Italian...obviously...restaurant to eat at.  I had a margarita pizza.  After dinner, it was back to the hostel.  We all just chilled for a while, and ended up going to bed kind of early.  We were pretty tired.