Fri 10/7, Sat 10/8
Today we took the train from Basel to Milan. It was a long (almost 5 hours) but pleasant ride through the Alps with some nice scenery.
At Bern, a group of five Swiss track athletes got on. They had performed well at the European Championships and were taking a weekend off from training to celebrate their success. They sat next to and across from us and were incredibly nice young men despite that they drank a huge quantity of beer that they had brought with them. The one closest to us told us several times, "we're not usually like this but we're taking a break from training to have a nice weekend." Their English was, of course, excellent. One of them was a Warriors fan and was wearing a Warriors hat. He knew all about the new stadium and wants to come see the Warriors play when it's finished,
We were a bit nervous about Milan. We needed to find the train to Malpensa airport where we were staying overnight before renting a car to come to Tuscany. We would need to buy tickets in the station, manage our luggage and find the train to the airport. We were the last to get off our car and as Dick was getting our large luggage pieces off the train an authorized porter appeared, piled all the bags on a cart, found out that we needed tickets so escorted us to a ticket machine, put all the info in the machine for us then took us to our airport train and loaded our luggage on for us. The whole thing took less than 15 minutes despite a gigantic and gigantically chaotic train station. Amazing luck!!
The train arrives in terminal one at Malpensa and the Sheraton hotel (where we were booked) is also inside the terminal so the arrival there was pretty easy. Dinner was at the Sheraton. We shared a unique first course of paccheri (a large tube pasta) in a squid ink sauce with baby squid. It was a delicious and very dramatic appearing completely black dish that only after it was gone did we realize how great a photo would have been.
The next morning we got our rental car and drove south to a small village just to the north of the city of Grosseto about 5 hours from Milan. Late in the day and within about an hour of our destination, the sky opened up and rained so hard that cars were pulling to the side of the road to wait it out. We pushed on driving VERY slowly and by the time we arrived, the rain had stopped.
We settled in a bit, got a load of laundry in the washer and and went into Grosseto to get some groceries. Dinner was a variety of Italian stuff we had bought at the grocery...some good cheese, olives, coppa, a type of crispy thin, cracker like bread and arugula. I also had some delicious sheep milk ricotta and tomatoes. A bottle of wine and it felt like dinner!
Today we took the train from Basel to Milan. It was a long (almost 5 hours) but pleasant ride through the Alps with some nice scenery.
We were a bit nervous about Milan. We needed to find the train to Malpensa airport where we were staying overnight before renting a car to come to Tuscany. We would need to buy tickets in the station, manage our luggage and find the train to the airport. We were the last to get off our car and as Dick was getting our large luggage pieces off the train an authorized porter appeared, piled all the bags on a cart, found out that we needed tickets so escorted us to a ticket machine, put all the info in the machine for us then took us to our airport train and loaded our luggage on for us. The whole thing took less than 15 minutes despite a gigantic and gigantically chaotic train station. Amazing luck!!
The train arrives in terminal one at Malpensa and the Sheraton hotel (where we were booked) is also inside the terminal so the arrival there was pretty easy. Dinner was at the Sheraton. We shared a unique first course of paccheri (a large tube pasta) in a squid ink sauce with baby squid. It was a delicious and very dramatic appearing completely black dish that only after it was gone did we realize how great a photo would have been.
The next morning we got our rental car and drove south to a small village just to the north of the city of Grosseto about 5 hours from Milan. Late in the day and within about an hour of our destination, the sky opened up and rained so hard that cars were pulling to the side of the road to wait it out. We pushed on driving VERY slowly and by the time we arrived, the rain had stopped.
We settled in a bit, got a load of laundry in the washer and and went into Grosseto to get some groceries. Dinner was a variety of Italian stuff we had bought at the grocery...some good cheese, olives, coppa, a type of crispy thin, cracker like bread and arugula. I also had some delicious sheep milk ricotta and tomatoes. A bottle of wine and it felt like dinner!
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