Italy Day 1: What a long day! I had everything packed and ready to go so we got up and left at 7 am. As we were leaving I thought, (and asked others) do you think I'll need my marriage license since my passport is in my maiden name? We all said no since my sister-in-law had just traveled to Ukraine on her maiden name passport. So we get to the airport an hour away and think that it will just be a nice relaxing wait for the plane, wrong. The lady at the desk totally berates me for not having changed the name on my passport and absolutely refused to let me fly unless I had a notarized copy of my marriage license! (yes, I know it's all my fault for not having researched it more thoroughly) We have an hour and a half until the flight leaves.... So my dear mother-in-law and sister-in-law pull a miracle and get the marriage license to us 20 minutes before the plane leaves, talk about stress. The flights were pretty uneventful, except that the Air France employees were sooooo rude! (okay just one of them, the rest were actually really nice) We watched the sunrise in the Paris airport and then landed in Milan around 9 am. (after around 18 hours of traveling) Italy is awesome! We took the train to the metro and the metro to our hotel. (we still had to walk about 6 blocks with all of our luggage.) We were sooo tired, but were determined to stay up as long as we could to lessen the effects of jetlag for the rest of the trip. We tried to go and see Michelangelo's Last Supper, but it was sold out (I guess it always is now that Davinci Code is so popular) But it was a beautiful walk from the metro with lots of beautiful buildings and a fun bookshop right next to the church that Last Supper is in. (it's not the Catholic bookshop, which I'm sure is great, but another one right there. The owner makes all the stationary/blank books by himself) Then we headed to the Sforza Castle and looked around. There was this awesome old guy wearing only boxer shorts and shoes with his head shaved who was sunbathing in the fountain out front. I just wish I had been brave enough to take a picture of him! This was the first place that I saw the street performers. The street performers in Italy for the most part dressup as statues and move when you toss a coin in their hat. They must get soooo hot! They stand still right in the sun all day. (and are usually dressed in plastic that looks metallic.) We were so tired and were just dragging but decided to try and get in as much as possible that first day, so we went and looked at the Duomo (incredible, more on that the second day) and the Galleria (Mall) .
It was awesome, they had all sorts of fun stores with men's ties, women's ties, expensive purses, etc. and then there was a McDonald's. (They were everywhere.) We got DH a shirt and two ties for his medical school interviews. On our way back to the hotel we stopped and got a treat that he used to get while he was on his mission there. It was Panza Rotti ( I think!) It was fried bread stuffed with tomatoes and cheese.... so good! Then we hobbled back to the hotel and slept from 5 pm until 9 am, yeah so we were tired.