Lars & Kerstin were kind enough to offer me a ride to the Nice Airport with them in the morning. From there I took a shuttle bus to the main train station in Nice, bought my train ticket to Milan for the evening, and headed out to explore.

My day in Nice was hot, and not particularly interesting. I am glad I was only there for one day, because despite it’s beauty, Nice didn’t have much happening. There was an unreal proportion of retirees that had staked out all the beaches, and I didn’t really find anyone to spend the day with, so I decided to hike around.

Walking along the coast the water was an unbelievable sky blue color, but this was all put to waste by the massive (soft-ball sized, but flatter) rocks on the beach, rather than anything resembling sand. I got away from the coast and hiked up a pretty steep embankment towards the castle that overlooks Nice, which was mostly destroyed. Over the hill was a nice old port area with ridiculously narrow streets (and inflated prices).

Later on walking around the city someone asked me where I was from (I think the map sold me out as a tourist) and it turned out she was a French native who had lived in Utah for a year or so. She was friendly, and spoke English, so I invited her to some Greek food at a little cafe by the coast. After my short time in Nice, I hopped on my ghetto Italian train to…

Milano!

I managed to make friends with my train compartment-mates from Kazakhstan and Russia, one of whom had just finished her MBA, the other who was headed for Chicago to do his PhD in Chemistry. As a result they both spoke English, Russian, and Italian, which proved helpful upon arrival, getting me going in the right direction.

We got in pretty late and I had to find my way to my super ghetto hostel. I got to the address and didn’t see any signs anywhere, so I headed down the street to another hotel to ask to use the phone. Fortunately the guy at reception there spoke English and was able to call the other Hostel and sort things out. Turns out it’s just a large apartment that had dividers put in, so you have to look at the directory listing and ring the buzzer on the outside to find it. Ghetto.

The next morning I set out to find a new hostel that was more central to what was happening in Milan, and began an adventure to find a printer (to print out my boarding pass for the flight to Frankfurt the next night). My first attempts were at Internet Cafes, but none of them had printers. Unfortunately I speak no Italian, and most Italians speak little English, so it proved more difficult than I thought. This led to an interesting exchange with a security guard for some apartment building who spoke Italian & Russian, but had to parry all of my attempts at being understood in English, German, Spanish, and French. After getting my point across through a small game of Charades, he pointed me in the direction of the local University, where I quickly found English-speakers, which led even more quickly to the use of a printer.

Back at the new hostel, I met up with a Kiwi named Justin. It was a four-bed room but we had it to ourselves. We struck up a conversation and before long were sharing some food and wine before heading out for a quick survey of the central parts of the city. Justin led me through the subway to our first stop, The Duomo.

The Duomo is the most epic church I have ever seen, and the subway is literally only about 20 feet away from the church, so it took me by surprise as we made our exit. The entire church is white on the outside, lies in the center of a massive square, is at least 100m tall, and has literally over 3,000 statues covering every inch of the exterior of the church. Basically everything that isn’t a fantastic stained glass window, is a finely carved stone sculpture. It was really impressive.

Justin and I managed to find a supermarket that had delicious euro-fifty wine, so we stocked up for our evening exploring the sights. Most things were closed down, but all the old buildings (that we visited again during opening hours the next day) looked incredible at night with all of the lighting they city built around them, in combination with the setting sun.

We got back to the hostel at about midnight and ordered a pizza from the shack next door. Justin sounded pretty confident when he made his order, so I didn’t question his Italian skills, but I should have, based on the resulting pizza (which surprised us both). It had only tomato paste, olives, and anchovies. It was an interesting mix, but the wine made it go down much more easily, and after that we crashed, hard.

We probably should have set an alarm, because the blackout curtains kept us in hibernation until about 1pm. After that we basically retraced our steps from the night before, but were able to supplement with some new sights that were closed off to us the night before.

One notable little excursion was to the ball-less bull, which is a bull built into some decorative floor tiling that had his package replaced with a water drain. For some unknown reason (although the internet almost certainly ‘knows’), it brings good luck to anyone who puts their heel in the drain and spins a full 360, effectively crushing the bulls would-be balls. It was a bit strange, but I was game and completed my 360 in style.

We also made a quick tour of an amazing old fort near the middle of the city that has been standing for some absurd number of years. There were plaques all over the place explaining what the fort had been used for over the centuries, and its occupation by the armies of so many different ancient lands was amazing.

After a quick nap in the park by the fort, Justin saw me off at the bus station, where I took an hour ride to the nearby budget airport in a town called Bergamo. This airport lies very near the base of the Italian Alps, and the views from the highway were awesome. After a couple hours in the terminal with a new friend from UC Davis, I was off to Frankfurt, Germany.