We have finally reached the last night of our journey,
settling in at the Sheraton Malpensa Hotel, which is connected to the airport. The
place is the nicest hotel we’ve stayed in this trip, and it offers us a room
close to our terminal, and a restaurant that even made homemade tagliatelle
pasta.
We woke up this morning early, and I walked Erik to the
train station in Florence. He made his train, and when he left I decided to
stop in to see what McDonalds had for breakfast fully expecting to find just filled
cornetti (croissants). To my happy surprise, they had actual breakfast
sandwiches. Bacon and egg McMuffin and sausage and egg McMuffin were similar to
home, but they had another that had sausage, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a mayonnaise
based sauce that was delicious even though it had no egg. It might sound crazy,
but after nearly 6 weeks of the same thing for breakfast, our meal hit the
spot.
We then set off for Milan in the driving rain. It was almost
blinding at some points, making it very dangerous to drive in. About halfway to
Milan, the rain stopped and we made up some time. After we got here, Mom needed
a nap, and I headed out on the town to see the Expo 2015, the world’s fair.
Expo was something I wasn’t prepared for. I figured it’d be
like a super-sized flower show, but it ended up being a roided-out version of
Disney’s EPCOT. I can’t even think of a country that wasn’t represented (though
I did not see North Korea), and each one had food and drink of the culture, as well as cultural exhibits. The
theme of the Expo is food, and how we make it sustainable for the world to
prevent hunger. About 80 percent of the bigger presenting nations had some sort
of special exhibit. Sadly, the wait was more than an hour for each of them, and
sometimes more than 2 hours. I was pressed for time, but if anyone is in the
Milan area before it ends in October, make a point to give it a full day or
two.
Tomorrow, we head home to America in the morning, so I’ll
see everyone back home.
