Good morning from Milano. I guess the thing to say about here is that you need to see it before going on to Florence as this is a big bustling reasonably dirty city but with some great architecture whereas Florence is all about being wonderful and that includes the feel of a not so big and very clean city.

That said, this is certainly the style capitol of the world for both men and  women. To just sit and watch you soon realise that if they got rid of all the tacky tourists who are wearing their clothes for the second or third day, then you would have a gem for clothing. Today was 30+ and quite muggy but the men are still in suits, jackets and ties, polished shoes and looking fabulous, oh and there are some good looking ladies as well LOL. As I mentioned yesterday the stiletto is back and sitting outside the designer stores watching the fashion mafia  you soon realise that if the heel isn't 4+ inches don't go in. How you walk around these cobbled streets with grills over the subways and not break your neck escapes me.

This is what I call a shopping mall

We took off this morning and trained it into the main square and did THE cathedral, wow is that big, must be almost as big as St Peters, and we got to seem more saints at rest, cardinals at rest and lots of very very large paintings. From there it was off shopping and we found the only place in town that still had some summers stock and was basically getting rid of it at 50% off so we both helped ourselves. There goes a couple more old shirts into the bin LOL.

Shopping done it was off to the castle for a wee look around and some more Michanglo's and De Vinci's and the compulsory tourists but thank god no lines to get in.

Now, I have to give credit where it is due. When we checked in at Hertz yesterday I mentioned that the GPS was a disaster and I was not happy about having to pay for something that didn't work and the young man behind the desk said "certainly Mr Allen, I would love to have seen your face when you realised this ", so man with humour, very polite and then he cancelled all the charges for the GPS and gave me a discount for returning the car early as I mentioned that without a GPS there was no way in the world I would be driving around MIlan. LOL

Hans you are absolutely right about Italians and driving. 50 means slowing down to 70 from 110, 90 means anything you want and as for one way streets, you can only go one way as all streets here are 4 feet wide. LOL that said we did survive.