Travel Day via Milano to Toulouse, France

Before the crack of dawn. ... we are up getting ready for our 6:00 AM ride to the train station. Our apartment in this pink villa has been a very nice place to stay in this beautiful little town of Stresa. The location is perfect up a small hill very near the ferry boats and a nice stroll along the lake into the town of Stresa. The area is so easy - we never used a map outside looking at it in the the villa on arrival. We have enjoyed the twin terraces on either side of the villa for our breakfast and coffee as well as our evening aperitivo. Overlooking the lake, we are spoiled for choice on amazing views. As we are often finding on this holiday, we feel like we are living inside a painting. It’s basically paradise. We are a bit sad to be leaving Stresa... not to mention Italy. 

But we have a time schedule today with a plane to catch at the Milan airport. We have a little more wiggle room because of our flight changes and will arrive late to Toulouse. It has been raining very hard pretty much all night and morning. Yikes! We have to manage our bags in a downpour? But it manages to calm down and we don’t really get wet.  

For our one-hour train ride into the city center of Milan, we have online tickets since the machine at the station is broken (spotted this on arrival last Friday) and the ticket office doesn’t maybe open early enough so we bought them online yesterday. Our taxi driver, Mauro, arrives just on time and gets us to the train station in just a few minutes since it’s very close to the villa. We are able to get on the train and find some seats near the door with all of our bags. Time for some cat-napping .... 

After about an hour, we pull into the Milano Centrale Station. We are happy the rain has pretty much ended! In Milano, we find ourselves transported into the bustling, busy, big city. Quite a contrast from t our sleepy little town on the lake. Milan is home to a Duomo which is one of the largest and most beautiful in the world. This is our reason for our visit this morning. We have several hours so we head off to reach the piazza Duomo. 

First stop is to drop our bags.... we have a reservation for a Bagbnb luggage storage where we can leave our bags securely without waiting in the lines at the train station for the luggage storage. Having done both in the past, it is a time-saving and less expensive to use Bagbnb. We have a location that is a few blocks over from the train station so we drag our bags a bit and then drop them in a hotel. 

Outside the hotel, we try to find an Uber but discover that like Rome, Milano only offers Uber Black. Having past the taxi stand by the train station on the way here, we back track a couple blocks and hop in a taxi to take us to the Duomo. Our car drops us off at the opposite end of the Gallery Vittorio Emmanuele which is great because walking through here is beautiful. The shops are closed and there are no people in here yet. 

Coming out of the shopping gallery, we emerge into the piazza Duomo which is always breath-taking. The Duomo stands tall and seems to glow. The marble has been cleaned bit by bit - they have been working on this Duomo since I first have visited back in 2006. The scaffolding is around the left side very near the back now and on the roof as we will discover when we go up. 

We have our tickets for the Duomo purchased online so we are able to only locate the entrance to the church and walk in through the security bag check. Since we are here very close to opening time, we happily have no lines to wait in. Inside the Duomo we are free to walk around and admire the amazing church. We found the statue of St Bartholomew who was flayed for his early Christian faith. This early though the back of the altar area is closed for visitors but that’s OK because we are on a time schedule and cannot wait the few hours for that to open up. We can see from a distance the stained glass windows back there. We are able to go down to the archeological area once it opens at 9:00 AM to see the ruins that have been found in excavations under the Duomo. They also have pictures of the ruins continuing under the whole piazza outside. Basically in many, many cities and towns in Italy you are walking above a Romain city or other ancient ruins of some sort.... 

Lastly at the Duomo, we head back outside and around the back of the Duomo to the entrance to the lift. Here we walk right through another security bag check and right onto the lift to reach the rooftop. The Milano Duomo’s rooftop and terraces are massive and you are allowed to wander around the roof admiring not only the views of the city but even more so the statues and little spires that litter the roof with beautiful effect. There are more statues on this Duomo than on any other building in the world. It’s like a little city up here with all the twists and turns on our route around the terraces. We find the stairs to go to the tippy top.... up here we are on the roof. There is a lot of work going on - probably continuing to clean the marble. We can see the finished marble that is so much whiter. It’s pretty amazing up here. 

After our visit to the Duomo, we take a walk across the piazza to find the Starbucks store for Holly to visit. It’s a few blocks away google maps says... yep, we find it but wow! It’s not any regular Starbucks store because it’s one of the few “Roastery” locations in the whole world. First, it’s massively huge. Second, it’s super fancy (there are guys at the doors opening them for visitors) which is fitting for Milano, and lastly, it has a giant coffee bean roasting operation going on in the middle of the store/coffee shop/eatery. Cindy gets a Starbucks coffee. Holly does her shopping. I learn about coffee bean roasting. 

Then we wander back to the Piazza Duomo where we sit for a drink and snack - some fruit for Cindy and tomato/mozzarella panini for me & Holly. We have an excellent view of the Duomo and are right across from the taxi stand. We will be traveling back to our bags and onto the airport so we need a bit of sustenance for this next piece of our journey.  

Our taxi drops us back at the hotel to pick up our bags. From here we walk back to the train station where we saw the airport buses. We had planned to take the Malpensa Express train from the station but saw these buses which seem a little more convenient. They are comfortable coach buses and they are right there. We buy our tickets, toss our bags in the luggage hold and board the bus. More cat napping is on order for our 1 hour ride to the airport .... 

At the airport we are eager to drop our bags and get to the gate because we just want to be on a plane since we had the little trauma last night about the cancelled flight. So far so good as we see on the departure board that our flight is scheduled to leave on time. There is little queue to wait in at the bag drop desk. We have our boarding passes printed so we can then go on to security. At the security point we have to go through these automatic gates that read the boarding pass. After Holly & I go through, Cindy is stuck. Her boarding pass won’t work to open the gate no matter what she does... the lady working that area is super nice and tries to help Cindy. When the pass still does not work, the lady figures out that Cindy’s boarding pass has the wrong name on it. Yikes! So Cindy high-tails it back to the desk to get a new pass. Thankful for nice and helpful people, Cindy has a new pass that works just fine and she is back in the security line with us in a jiffy. We blast through security and find our gate. Before getting there though we sit for a quick Aperol Spritz - final one in Italy for 2019. 

Once on the plane to Paris, it’s a little more napping and sitting there for our short flight. In Paris we have a very short layover with departure from the same terminal and gate area where we landed so it’s super easy. We have a short time to poke into some shops and then soon our flight is boarding. Another short flight to Toulouse and we have made it to our final destination for this day. 

In Toulouse we hop into a taxi that drives us into the city centre and to our little hotel, Hotel Albert 1ere, for the night. We have booked a triple room but are give a family room that has three beds - one of which is a bunk bed with a couch on the top part. The hotel is very conveniently located in a cute part of town where we can walk to a nice area called Place Saint Georges for our dinner. Holly spots a creperie that serves galettes which are the gluten-free buckwheat crepes. Well, sadly we discover from the waiter that this restaurant uses 20% wheat flour in their galettes. What ?!? How sad because now Cindy has to substitute a salad instead.... bummer. But the whole square where we are seated outside on the terrace is a nice place for a meal at night. 

This travel day is long but we had fun seeing the Duomo and were very happy to have an alternative flight option that did not involve a long layover or a big change in our plans. It all worked out.