Ciao!
Today Lilly and I woke up and had breakfast at Alessia's house one last time. Cappuccino and tea and the same items from the day before. All very delicious . Then it began to rain so we sat down and tried tomplan the next week since Lilly and I really never sat down in person to plan out our trip since I was in Colorado then Texas then germany. We have a pretty good idea of our plan now I think.
Well since it was raining we didn't go on the scenic walk we had planned in Varese with Alessia but we just walked around the town of Varese for a few hours. The girls had pizza for lunch and I had sushi rolls. Yup, sushi in America, Germany, and Italy is all the same if you were wondering. But it's still all good and gluten free. I decided I needed another bag since I gave dad my backpack carryon so I bought a nice sized bag for everything for 26 euro. Not a bad deal and it really helps with holding everything so I think it was a good purchase even if I did hate spending euro on it...
After that was Gelato. Yay! This time I had a small with half mint and half dark chocolate. O.m.g. The mint gelato blew my mind. It tasted like someone had muddled fresh mint from a garden and then put it straight into the gelato maker or whatever. The best mint ice cream I have ever had. The chocolate was good too of course, very creamy and not too sweet and when paired with the mint it was amazing. Lilly had peach and passion fruit. The passion fruit was super refreshing and delicious, I was a fan! We walked around some more and found a kind of natural / organic / specialty food store that had some gluten free Italian items. I bought a berry tart and hazelnut chocolate wafers and a gluten free beer made in Germany. Lol I go to Italy to get gluten free beer. So far I only tried one of the hazelnut wafers. It was good, I mean, its not like omg I can tell this is Italian and gluten free but it was still fun to try something.
After Varese it was time to say good bye to Alessia. It was so wonderful seeing her and she and her family were so sweet and helpful to us, it was really wonderful. Well Lilly and I boarded our train to Milan and we were officially off on our adventure on our own! We successfully made it to Milan and got on the correct metro to go to the Milan central train station and walked to our hotel. Ok, so walking to our hotel we got a bit lost because we went the complete opposite way because we were oriented wrong on the map we were using but we were able to figure it out on our own ( the one person we asked for help gave us directions in the complete opposite way of our hotel so we didn't want to ask for any more help just then ) . Hotel Terminal is only like a 5 minute walk from the train station and for 106 American dollars a night, it's really nice. The y have free wifi except it doesn't work ( so I am writing this on Wednesday but I probably won't post until Thursday ) and it's a nice sized room for Europe. The key has a special magnet in it so we have to put it in a special holder in the room in order to tuen the lights on - to save electricity I think, which is nifty. You also have to use the key to open AND close the door. Safe. Good.
We ventured out on our own and actually felt pretty comfortable walking around. We did a lap around the central station walking for about 20min or maybe 30 and then headed back to a restaurant down the street from the hotel. It was very cute and the prices seemed reasonable and they had English under all the Italian...helpful. Lol. We had .5 l of the house red wine and 1 l of sparkling water for the two of us. The wine was so delicious, not too acidic and really nice warm fruity flavors. Lilly had a margherita pizza and I had a pinnochio salad which was pear, Parmesan, and corn on a bed of arugala. The Parmesan was freshly sliced on the pears. Oh it was so good and then I drizzles olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it. Delicious! We looked a t the dessert menu too, after all it was our first meal in Milan and our first international meal on our won! And we each got gelato. Lilly had a chocolate gelato that had vanilla gelato inside of it and was in a ball and rolled in cocoa. It was good and the cocoa was so rich but without being too sweet. I had vanilla gelato with coffee gelato inside and rolled in meringue, so it had crunch on the outside. They were both good but I think we both liked mine the best.
Then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our 8am train to Florence in the morning! Hopefully everything goes well!
Ciao