So I’m lying in my bunk bed at 4 in the morning. There are two other people in my room. One is a Korean kid who checked in after me and the other is a grown man from West Africa here for a week for a postal convention.
The latter stunk up the whole room and he snored like no one I had ever heard snore before. A few times I heard the Korean bash the top of his bunk bed in an effort to shut him up as the man was sleeping above him.
So here I was at 4 in the morning – now wide awake – contemplating what to do about this situation. I had one more night in this room and didn’t know if I could take it. Plus I had seen as much as I wanted to see with Bern and frankly I was sick of high prices and everyone speaking German with no English in sight.
I hatched a plan. Originally I was going to just go into Milan the following morning and spend a couple of hours there over lunch before heading to the airport to fly out to Malta.
But I did something crazy.
Even though I had already paid for another nights stay in Bern and I wouldn’t be able to get a refund, I went on the laptop and booked a hostel for the same night in Milan.
Yep, I was going to go to Milan a day early. Sure, I’ve been told there was nothing to do in Milan but, hey, the way I looked at it – there was nothing for me to do in Bern either but at least I’d hopefully be staying in a better hostel, not have a smelly snorer in my room and find some people to speak English.
Plus there’s Margherita pizza!
So at 8 in the morning I headed out to the train station and caught the train to Milan. I arrived just after noon to a light drizzle and grey skies.
After checking in I went and satisfied my overwhelming craving for Margherita pizza and then went over to the Duomo (yes, another church). I didn’t pay to go in – just snapped some pics and then walked around the plaza before stopping to do the traditional spinning on the bulls’ balls (hey, look it up on Google).
For dinner I walked over to the far side of town where all the restaurants and bars are. After passing countless Japanese, Chinese and other ethnic restaurants I found an Italian one with very reasonable prices. I stepped inside and was greeted by 4 asians. Ummmm… I just kind of put my finger up as if to say “one second” and then just walked straight back out the door.
Finally I found an authentic Italian restaurant. I started with a 1/2 liter of white wine and for my meal I had bruschetta done three ways followed by a great seafood and rice dish. It was such a huge meal I actually had no room for dessert so I walked it off with a half hour walk back to the hostel.
And that was it. Nothing special but at least my room doesn’t smell and no one’s snoring…