Milano...

It's a good cookie, but the city needs some work.

This was the site of our first day trip outside of Genoa. We left super early to be on a train by 8:00 and were in Milan by 9:30 or so. Milan in January is definitely not pleasant! First of all, it is about 20 degrees colder than Genoa, and it is a wet cold since the clouds and fog never leave (until April or so)!!

Straight from the train station we hopped on a bus that took us out to our first stop. Basically an obnoxious conglomeration of modern architecture. Ugh. We made our way to a few churches, stopped here and there for espressos and bathroom breaks and ended up at the Duomo of Milan (a ginormous gothic style church) for lunch. The pidgeons in the large plaza outside of the church numbered in the thousands and were definitely NOT afraid of people. As a matter of fact, they probably enjoy flying straight at people to watch them scream and run. There was a guy out there that would give you a little bit of corn, and all of the pidgeons would just flock to you and climb all over you and around your feet. Very gross.

Found lunch and cappuchinos and continued into the Duomo and back to a few other churches to go inside.

In the plaza outside of the Duomo, MTV Italy's TRL was set up and there were TONS of screaming girls. I don't know what pop star was up there, but the girls sure put on a show. We also got accosted by some men trying to tie pieces of yarn onto our wrists then charging us for them. Haha. Umm, I told you not to put your little string on me, but you did. Too bad, so sad. So I got a sweet new piece of yarn for a bracelet (where is the eye-rolling emoticon?).

We did get to see a few couture boutiques. In one shopping area, where two large hallways met, there were three boutiques (Prada, Louis Vuitton, and something else) and a McDonalds! Haha. But it was a reeeaaallly nice McDonalds, with a McCafe and everything! Haha. Armani was nextdoor, obvi.

As for classes, we are still having our Italian lessons about twice a day, and studio is still going strong. Our goal is to work in pairs to develop something (I don't know Architecture speak). There is a design show in Milan in April for "up and coming designers" that we have all been invited to display our work in, so our professor is flipping out because she wants it to be 100% awesome. Ugh, I would rather not.

Still thinking about what we want to do this weekend. Options include: Cinque Terra, Monte Carlo, Milan again, or Torino.

Ciao for now.