Travel Adventures: Italy: Milan & Venice

I left for Europe as soon as both my friend an I finished our winter finals and our goal was to vacation about 2 weeks. That meant I would be spending the holidays overseas! How exciting to spend the holidays overseas with amazing friends...yet...how depressing not spending the holidays with my family, especially my 7 year old daughter! It was hard, but as mentioned in a previous post, we texted, talked over the phone, and video chatted as often as possible.

Milan

The city of fashion ... and amazing pizza! We stayed in Milan about 3 days and mainly went shopping! Every street was filled with Christmas lights and decor, markets, shoppers, and tourists. As cheap, college, travelers we loved the street markets that provided us with free samples of food! We had light breakfast and lunch and filled ourselves with amazing samples of sausages, dried meats, cannolis, zeppoles, and candies! I wish I had taken more pictures of all these amazing foods but it was rainy most of the time and I did not want to ruin my phone.

Going into the shopping center

Shopping Center's Ceiling

Walking Around

Artful City

Duomo de Milano

Having recently lost my grandfather, walking into any cathedral or church instantly brings back his memory. This place was no different. Walking into this cathedral and seeing the grandiosity of the catholic church brings mixed emotions. It reminds me of my late grandfather and all our heated discussions of the pros and cons of the church. Nonetheless, I knew he would have loved seeing this place and lit a candle in his honor.

According to the Duomo's website: "The Duomo, a symbol of Milan all over the world, is one of the biggest Gothic cathedrals in Italy and in Europe. The heritage of the Milaneese and of mankind, it has expressed for centuries, in all its grandeur, Man's devotion to God and represents an ongoing commitment for the future generations."

There was a fee to take pics inside with your own camera :/ we paid for only one camera, my friend has this pics

Venice is flooding!

What do you mean Venice will flood the day after Christmas!! We had a very amazing tour guide who we paid extra to give us the off the clock tour and it was worth it. He gave us much valuable information about the city. Such as, oh I don't know, the city will be flooding after Christmas and thats why you see all those gangways - you know those things that looks like a platform as if the city was getting ready for a performance. Its not a stage, its for you to get around the city and not get wet by the flood!

So Christmas in Venice was great! We went to mass and hung out in our "house" all night. We made an amazing vegetarian pasta that we left behind for the owners of the house and the next guest (yes we made too much because we were 'starving' but we all got full on wine! ).

No, this is not the flood!

How did we know the flood was nearing? Well the whole city began to smell like sewer...you know those things that lead water to the ocean, except the water ocean was about to rise this time. Also, the we freaked out and did some research that night. And made sure we knew what those very loud sirens meant. Good news was that two of us would be leaving at 3am and the other two would be leaving around 5am for the flight to Athens. I was the lucky one to leave at 3am. Waters were starting to rise already but we made cross town without much damage. No, I did not take pictures because I did not want to drop my camera in the flood and it was raining! When the other two left Venice, the water was ankle high. I'm glad we did not stick around for knee high ocean water.