April 16

.

Note to self -- never, EVER, ***EVER*** print maps with most of the street names not showing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ever.

Period.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was a Very Bad navigation day.

We got up this morning and ate the entirely forgetable breakfast included in the cost of the hotel.

Then we walked to the train station so my daughter could catch transportation to the airport where she was to meet the people she will spend the next week with.

It seemed weird for her to get on a bus and me to walk away.........

I went into the train station and got a map. I followed along quite nicely until I got distracted by a park, and then things went south. Have I mentioned that it was totally overcast????

Without my buddy, the sun, to help me, I got totally turned around, and with a LOT of street names on the map too small to read I walked in circles for a lot longer than I wished!!!!!

Eventually I found the Duomo.

Whew.

I bought a sandwich and a coffee, used their bathroom, sat for a bit, and then did some exploring.

I went into the Duomo. It is by far the biggest church I've seen on this trip. The outside is heavily embellished with carved marble. If is dark inside, but there is a lot of stained glass.

On the other side of the piazza is some very ritzy shopping. I mean like a Mercedes dealership.

I took a lot of pics of the fancy old building housing all the glitz and glamour, bought two postcards, and called that enough excitement for one day.

My tourist-info map has a subway map on the back, and I could see a straight shot from the Duomo to my hotel. I figure I could figure that out, and it was a piece of cake until I got off at my stop and could not figure out exactly where I was.

Between the way the map I printed at home (to show how to get to the hotel ) NOT showing all the ways to come out of the subway , and it missing an awful lot of street names, I was walking in circles YET AGAIN......

I kept seeing things I recognized, but could not reconcile them with what I could see on the map.

Sigh and argh.

I finally asked someone, who told me "keep going; second left," and, hallelujah, there was the hotel.

All that wandering was not in vain -- I found a big grocery and got yogurt, skald, and bread for supper.

Then I spent an hour typing this post with one finger, so you all could know I was ok.

I have decided to take a taxi to the airport tomorrow. I have all the gifts we were given by the people we visited, and they are heavy.

Luckily I fly out of the close airport -- my daughter had to go to the other one, which is much farther from the hotel!

Time for a yogurt and a break.

Buona sera!



In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

.