first evening in Milano

I'm staying with The Husband and The Wife who graciously let me have the spare bedroom (huge space by the way)... for their protection I shall refer to them as just that.

after a much needed shower and change of clothes, the couple decided to show me around... we walked to many places and i am utterly overwhelmed by the cultural differences...
There was the outlines of an old church that had a socialist group member standing at a 2nd story 'window' leading a Simon-Says type of game, and about 40 people below following his moves to music. a bunch more people crowded around amazed and awed by this, us included...

we picked a place for Appertivo - which is usually between 5:30 and 6:30pm - you buy a drink, and you're entitled to appertizer type of food at the place. the place we went to had excellent spread - tuna pasta salads, rice salads, pasta with various sauces, grilled vegetables, meatballs, flaky dough pie slices..... yum. i had a drink that was MMM champagne with fresh strawberry puree and it was delicious.

After that, we walked around some more, to the Duomo which is the big main church in downtown Milan... we walked to the castle past there and decided we should come back during the day to do the museums there. The Castle was staggeringly beautiful, the courtyard all lit up and looks imposing even today.

then, my friends introduced me to Grom. They had, in the 6 months so far that they've lived here, tried many gelaterias, and Grom is THE BEST. they source all the ingredients to highest standards - from the milk used, to the hazelnut and chocolate, down to the pure water....
I had a scoop of hazelnut gelato, which is the best i've ever tasted...
we finally walked home, and then google-mapped our route because we were unreasonably tired...

turned out we had walked 3.5 miles, which is about 3.3 miles more than i might walk in a given day!

being in california, a car is so essential to getting around, that i miss being in a walking city, that i can walk myself to places and back, no need to worry about traffic and parking... i love it. Montreal is such a city and it's been a while since I get to just explore a city...

(i'm only able to update this on borrowed computer time so look out for sporadic updates, but check FB for photos)