American Mom in London: March 2014

Since we love Italy so much, we decided to squeeze in one more trip to the country before our time in London is up (under four more months to go now). On our two cruises last summer, we were able to see a lot of the country (Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples, the Amalfi Coast, Sicily, and Venice), but we hadn't seen any of the inland cities. We decided on Milan for this trip, the second most populous city in Italy known as being a world leader in fashion and design.

We arrived in Milan on Friday afternoon and decided to spend some time at the large park across the street from our hotel to allow Colin to burn off some energy after being such a good traveler. There was a large playground and a ride with various types of vehicles (train, tractor, motorcycle, plane, etc.) so he was a happy boy. My goal of this trip was to eat as much gelato as possible since we wouldn't be returning to Italy before moving back to the US so we started out the trip on the right note by enjoying some gelato before having a yummy Italian dinner (caprese salad starter followed by pizza for the boys and lasagna for me).

The second day of our trip we went on an all day guided trip to Lake Como. Lake Como is a popular vacation destination. The areas most famous resident is George Clooney who seemed to be mentioned about 20 times during our guided tour. We started the day by spending some time in the town of Como and then took a boat tour around the lake. The lake is very narrow and shaped like an upside down "Y". The houses lining the lake were amazing. I am sure they are right in our price range so we will be looking into purchasing one soon. After a fun day in the Lake Como area, we made it back to Milan in time for another Italian dinner. Oh, and I managed to have gelato twice this day so it was another success.

During the final day of our trip, we had time to explore the main sites of Milan. We started the day with a visit to Milan's Cathedral (Duomo), a Gothic cathedral that is one of the largest churches in the world. It was pretty impressive but to be honest all these churches (and castles for that matter) are starting to blend together at this point. We have been spoiled with all of our European travels. The highlight was watching Colin chase pigeons around like a mad man in the square outside of the cathedral. After visiting the Duomo, we walked to the Galleria. The Galleria is one of the world's oldest shopping malls and is housed in an amazing double vaulted glass arcade. There was no shortage of designer stores here. The only thing we could afford was some gelato (at 10am - starting the day off right). The weather was gorgeous this day so we spent the rest of our time enjoying the city's parks and having a final Italian lunch of flat bread sandwiches. We also fit in one last gelato stop completing the total gelato count on this trip at five so the title of this post is appropriate.