Back to Italy

Milano! The fashion capital of the world, a lively bustling city, the business capital of north Italy! Bull shit, it’s a shady city with no one on the streets, you feel like you’re about to get mugged almost all the time, you see none of the Italian culture and architecture there. The worst part was that when we got there, none of the hostels were free, in fact there are very few hostels, most of them are just hotels, you are better off booking a hihostel in advance, because once you get there, its all a mess. The tourist office is never open, its there and it has some timings, but we went there during those timings quite a few times and always found it to be closed.

Nonetheless, we got some accommodation and we planned to spend a day checking it out and the main city centre is fairly decent. It’s basically built around the Duomo, which actually is quite a grand structure and was definitely worth the visit. The structure was not like the Roman Basilicas, it had more of a castle like feel to it. There was also a Ferrari store right around the corner, which was a bit of a treat ( since it had an F1 car replica and a couple of real super cars you could drive around for 30 mins for about 190 Euros, but no Italia, so I didn’t bother).

Apart from that there was a Castle, which was quite useless to be honest and that was pretty much it for the city.  Basically it all got over much sooner than expected, so we headed over to Lake como, which is just 40 odd minutes from Milan by train. Basically its the town of Como, which is where the lake starts. If you see the pictures, the lake side is absolutely brilliant, but Como is a city, a typical city, nothing really like those photos. Nonetheless, if you walk out of Como then you will find that scenery and the beauty. We reached there at around 3, so we didn’t have a lot of time to do much but we did manage to spend some time outside the city area and next to the lake. Ideally you should go to one of the nicer small towns such as Bellagio which are further away. But Como itself is quite nice and we actually spent a pretty decent evening there.

After Lake Como though, we had to go back to the useless shady hotel we had got at 30 Euros per person per night! Not only was Milan a hopeless place, it was expensive as well. Almost all the hotels were full and we were having a terrible time there. Fortunately we got a second hotel, which was for 25 Euros per person. Not a bargain, but cheaper nonetheless.

The next day, we checked the weather and headed off to Florence (the rain was becoming quite a pain). Florence was nothing like Milan, it was lively and beautiful. The architecture was brilliant, the small streets were nice and the food in the small bakeries was also very good (and cheap). The main parts of Florence are the main Duomo, the main square(with the statue of David) and the brilliant view from the top of the mountain just outside the city. The statue of David mind you is not the original, the original is hidden away in some museum in Florence itself, but the replica is out in the street for all to see. Its quite nice nonetheless. Apart from these 3 places, Florence generally has a nice feel to the town. Its full of life and lots of tourists as well.

The view from the mountain is very nice as well its the sort of place you would want to spend the afternoon, just looking over the city and having some tea or something. In any case, after having walked the entire city, it was time to head back and well back meant Milan and Milan meant more depression. We wanted to take the 5 o’clock train, but it was full and so were the 6,7,8,9 and 10. They were all full. Luckily we could take any train that did not require reservation. This did mean that it took us 5.5 hours instead of 2, but at least we got home. We reached at 11 and were totally exhausted.

The next day, we had to hit the road early, since we had to go to Venice and it was a long way from Milan (over 3 hours). Fortunately, this time there was no booking involved with the Eurail pass. Everyone had told us that its a useless city and that we will not like it at all. Surprisingly, we really loved it! Maybe it was because we were coming from Milan, or maybe it was just that our expectations were pretty low. The small gullies, the streams of water everywhere, it was all quite nice and once again, the Roman architecture was very nice. In fact, Venice had one of the best plazas we had seen in the entire trip. Not just that, it had a lovely shore and nice churches. We actually ran short of time. Most importantly, Venice had good food! We were able to get good and cheap Italian in Venice and realised that if you eat at the small bakeries in one of the gullies, you would probably have something you wont regret, if you go for a big restaurant with seating from many on the outside, you will probably end up being disappointed.

On the way back to the station, we also had our last Gelato in Italy and boarded the train back to Milan. We could have left that night itself, to reach Cannes the next day, but we took the safer option and stayed in Milan to take the early morning train the next day. Surprisingly, Milan is most lively at 6am and that was the only time it really felt a little safe. We took a train at 7 something to Cannes (although our initial plan was to go to Marseilles directly. We reached Cannes in the afternoon and frankly there isn’t much in the city if you’re on a budget. So we did what most budget travellers probably do. Sit by the beach for an hour and caught the next train out.

Marseilles, I think the defining moment would have been when we landed, went to the tourist office and asked for help. In English. What a mistake the guy almost shouted at us. How dare we speak English! They refused to help us with anything at all. Luckily we got a map and knew where to go for our hostel. We figured we will check out the city as we went, because we probably won’t have time after we reach the hostel. Another mistake, since nobody speaks English, you cant find anything and with 20Kgs (probably more) on each of our backs, there was no chance we were going to see the city and then walk another 7 km to our hostels after that, at least not before nightfall. We decided to ditch the touring and simply headed towards the hostel. 7Km was still too much and we decided to grab a bite at McDonalds. As it turns out, everyone speaks perfect English there. One simple reason, money.  As long as they have some work with you, they can speak your language, if not, get lost. Ba

sically, I zon laikh ze Fuench.

Anyways, we did manage to find some helpful people in France and made our way to the metro station. We got vaguely close to our hostel and then walked another 45 minutes. After getting out of the useless city area, we finally found the sea side we were looking for the whole day. It was a nice area with a park one side, the hills beyond that and the sea on another side. A very nice walk and frankly the Marseilles the rest of it also should have been. Once we got to the hostel though, it was all good. Hostels are brilliant places. Everyone is a traveller, they all understand your problems, they all speak your language and they all are willing to help (unless you’re in Milan of course). We were able to just hit the bed and sleep. We had really pushed ourselves today and Bharat almost tore a muscle in the night in fact.

The next day we had another early train to Barcelona. We had heard a lot of good things about Barca and were really hoping that the trip would look up from there onwards.