Milano is No Cookie

This month the big trip we took on the Tuesday we all have off was to Vercelli to see the exhibition of Mondrian, Miro, and Calder that has most of Peggy's art works of those men in it. There were so many of us who signed up to go that instead of taking a train they rented a coach bus. It turns out Vercelli is West of Milan so it took us 5 hours by bus to get there. Mind you this was a day trip, and a tour of the exhibition only took and hour. Also, Vercelli is a run down little town with nothing much going for it. The bus driver got a little turned around when we first arrived and we ended up near some abandoned factories with brick walls and a gate that looked like the entrance to Auschwitz. That does not inspire much fun in a day trip.

So, instead of getting back on the coach bus for another thrilling 5 hours back to Venice, a few of us decided to take the train to Milano. One of the interns is from Milano so she gave us a map and a list of places to see and where to eat. When we got there it was pouring rain and the directions to our hostel were less than helpful. We ended up asking about 5 different people, 2 of whom were policemen, how to find the bus line that ran to the street we needed. Finally the last person gave us detailed directions and we eventually found the hostel. Along the way my friend realized he forgot his passport, so all we could do was hope the hostel was nice enough to let us stay. The conversation with the front desk man is as follows:

Front desk man: I need all your passports
Friend: (Pretending to scour his bag) I can't find it, I think it was stolen.
FDM: Do you have any form of ID?
Friend: No.
FDM: You cannot not stay here without it.
Friend: I have a credit card with my name on it. (Shows the card)
FDM: Do you have anything with a picture on it?
Friend. No, but I can show you my facebook.

This worked. Got to love hostels. We dropped off our stuff and found a bus to the area called Navigli where there are supposed to be a ton of apertivo places where you pay about 9euro for your drinks but all you can eat buffet. That is not what we found. I don't know where we ended up but there were about 2 bars and pizza place. We picked the pizza place and it was a bad choice.

We finally ended back at the hostel at 1am, where there was a new Front Desk Guy waiting for us. He told us that he called the police and that our friend couldn't stay without an ID, and we would have to go to the police station to fill out a theft report. This is not the kind of thing you want to come back to after overpaying for bad pizza and waiting for a bus for 45 minutes...eventually we got him to relent. Next time we'll just have to stay at the Four Seasons.