A Day in Milan - or close...

Well, here in Europe we're coming to the end of what has been a very interesting day. I'm here in Milan - however, not actually Milan, but a little town about 20k outside of Milan called Limbiate. I spent the morning walking the town with Dennis, my host, which was a ton of fun. Here's a pic of him and his son Samuel...

The streets are Italian picturesque - the main streets have old bikes on them, brick sidewalks and some brick roads, and the back streets are narrow passageways with 2-3 story buildings straight up on either side with little balconies and planters overlooking the quiet street. If you picture a small town in the non-mountainous part of Italy, Limbiate is probably what comes to mind.

We came back for a FABULOUS Italian and Salvadoran lunch (it was truly international!), which started out with this dish which I just had to take a picture of my first Italian meal - lovingly prepared by two Salvadoran women!



After lunch, Dennis had to go to work, so I walked the streets again - this time with Ceceilia, her friend Jeannette, and Samuel again. We went to the grocery store and shopping at a mall. Uneventful, except it was probably was normal Italians do normally - which was pretty cool. There will be another chance to get into Milan - we do the Milan tourist thing next weekend - but this was just a chance to hang out with a great family who cared for me and invited me in for a day or so. And that was wonderful.

Tomorrow we'll pick up Mario and Juan around 1:00 or 2:00pm local time, and sometime in the afternoon/evening, we're going to have the adventure of taking a train with my 5,000 lbs (or should that be kilos...) of luggage into Venice. And from there, reality hits. Hard riding, more silence and solitude, and I'm sure a really sore rear end...

My goal tonight is just to get enough sleep so that I can actually be in this time zone and not just be a zombie - we'll see how that goes.

One last thing - here's a video from my friend Samuel. Normally these videos will be either of tired bikers or action packed rides - but for today, just a cute kid...