Florence 2012: "All Roads Lead to Rome" July 20-22: Milan and Rome

Famous last words: "We'll just catch the next train."

Because there's always another train. Always.

We went to Milan for the day, and everything went perfectly. We got tickets to see The Last Supper because of a cancellation, saw the Duomo, made it to the shopping district, and found the H&M (where we could actually afford to walk inside).

This is the church with The Last Supper inside.

Milan has its own castle.

The castle had a moat and drawbridge around it!

Milan is a really beautiful city, but it was very different from Florence. It reminded me a lot of Paris.

We had to settle for fast food pizza and gelato for dinner, but it gave us enough time to make it back to the train station for our 8:20 train. Like, it gave us +40 minutes to get back. Just hop on the metro (which was conveniently outside of the restaurant) take it two stops and we would be inside the train station.

Except the metro was closed until 10. Why? We still aren't sure. It runs until midnight. Always.

It's okay. It's just a two kilometer walk to the train station. At this point, we still had 30 minutes to make our train. No problem.

So here we are, running through the streets of Milan, trying to catch our train. We didn't want to take the next train, because it would get us home later, and Lauren and I had a bus to catch at 6:00 the next morning for Rome, so a later train would be inconvenient. Ha.

Really. Most of the time, trains run every half hour or so. And if for some reason you can't get a fast train, which you usually can, you can make it on an intercity or regional train. Always. See a pattern yet?

We walk into the train station at 8:17, and our train is no where on the board. Really. It wasn't there.

So we'll just catch the next train.

Or not.

The ladies at the TrenItalia counter and the customer service kept showing us our trains on the schedule and saying "This was your train. You missed it." I know we missed it, but when is the next one? "There isn't one. That was the last one." The only one? What about a bus? "No more buses tonight." None? "No." Well, can you help us get home? "No."

By now, I was crying in the middle of the train station. The police officer was the only one who felt sorry for us. He helped us get to a place where we could potentially take a bus back to Florence.

No buses.

What about a rental car? You only have to be 18, and thank goodness Brittany's dad [attempted] to teach me how to drive a stick shift, because I was the only one of us who had even sat in the driver's seat of a manual car. We were determined to make it home that night, because we were taking a bus to Rome at 6 the next morning with our school, and I would be on that bus. The only problem? The only car they could give us to take back in Florence was too big for anyone under 21 to drive. We could take a shuttle to the airport and try to rent a smaller car there, but it was going to cost us 40 euro just to get there.

We realized, after talking to our advisor, that our only option really was to stay in Milan for the night. Our train would get us there on time, and leave us 15 minutes to meet our group. We booked the next morning's tickets, found a hostel, and tried to get some sleep for the night. We woke up at 5 the next morning, and left in record time (5:15, no joke) because we had no make up, no changes of clothes, no toothbrushes (yeah, gross), so we just got up and left. So, please excuse the fact that I appear to be wearing the same outfit in Milan and Rome. Because I am.

Thankfully, our roommates were also on the trip to Rome, so they packed us some extra clothes and toiletries.

So, we made it to our train and four hours later, we were in Rome. Lauren and I literally ran off the train, through the station, and to the metro. We bought our tickets, caught the metro to the Colosseum, and ran across the street to meet our group two or three minutes before our deadline. We were instructed to be there before 10, because they would be entering the Colosseum exactly at 10. We were there on time, somehow, but their bus arrived late at 10:28. Thankfully, we had finally caught up with our group (and had actually spent less time travelling than them, even though we traveled twice as far. Thank goodness for high speed trains!).