Milan; Monday, 28 September, 2009

A very leisurely breakfast this morning to make up for yesterday, and then a gentle wander into town to go on the open-top bus tour.

This being a Monday there was very little in the way of attractions actually open, so I decided to do a circuit of each of the two routes the tour offered. Only Milan’s traffic got in the way.

By the time I finally go to the starting point at the castle it was already 11:15, but that wasn’t a problem, the tour wasn’t due out to 11:30. 11:30 came and went, as did 11:45. Finally some 25 minutes late the bus pulled in from the first tour of the morning which had obviously taken quite a bit longer than the 90 minutes allocated.

There were patches of bad traffic, and you could see where it had gotten held up on its first journey, but with the driver going at quite a bit more than the normal sedate speed for a tour, we made it back to the Castle only 10 minutes behind schedule, and by the time we got back round to the Cathedral again, the bus was almost on time.

By now it was early afternoon, and I decided to take a break from the tour (having now been round Route B fully once and half way round again to get back to the Cathedral) and headed into the Cathedral to have a look around.

Having taken in the sites inside the cathedral I took the lift to the roof to take in the stunning views both of the Cathedral itself and of Milan from it.

Then it was time to come back down to earth, take the tour bus round on route A for a circuit and a bit back past the Cathedral to the castle.

After getting back to the castle I had a wander round to the station for the train to the airport to check what times the trains were, and where the luggage lockers were. Unfortunately, I found that the luggage lockers were all out of service (and looked like they had been out of service for some time), so instead I wandered over to the central station to check there. Thankfully they did have a left luggage service, so I knew that I could leave my stuff there, and if needed take the bus from there out to the airport.

Having sorted out the plans for tomorrow, I wandered back to the centre of town for a bit to eat, before heading back to the hotel to pack and get a good nights sleep.