You Talking to Me?

Buon giorno. We arrived last night in Milan.

Linda chose this part of our trip, and I know very little about it. It did seem to me that all I noticed last night were lots - and lots and lots - of high fashion shops. When I asked her what there is here that I may be interested in, she told me that there's a very big church not far from the hotel.

That sounds like a fair trade to me. One more old church for me and dozens more new stores for Linda.

Getting here last night was, well, it was interesting. We had an uneventful flight in from Lisbon and then met the taxi driver from hell, Milan's own latter day version of Travis Bickle. I will call him Traviso.

Our fun started when we walked to the car. We are not overloaded with luggage this trip. Two regular sized suitcases and two small totes. Traviso, however, thought it would be more interesting to become a professional taxi driver if he bought a car that could comfortably fit inside an SUV.

Traviso struggled with our luggage, grunting, shoving, muttering some Milanese curse under his breath. I took the carry-on bags and moved to put them in the front seat. No! Traviso barked, racing to place the bags there himself.

OK, so Trav has a small car and is a bit funny about passengers loading their own bags. If that was all, no big deal. Unfortunately, that wasn't all.

The Milan airport is quite a distance from the city itself. So much so, in fact, that the taxi fare was greater than the airfare from Lisbon. Had we known, we would have simply bought parachutes and got out during landing.

Traviso obviously was in no mood for such a long trip, although I cannot imagine what other trips he would expect when he parks in the taxi rank at the Milan Airport. Anyhow, I can accurately report that the airplane had travelled somewhat faster than the taxi did, but only marginally. And at least the airplane had set aside a room where you can pee.

One of the benefits of having been brought up on the old Imperial system is that I still have to calculate what the metric means. So there is actually a period of calm between seeing 180 k/hr on the speedometer and figuring out that means we're cruising down the highway at over 110 miles per. At least I now understood why no one was passing us.

Once in Milan, Traviso proved particularly adept at cutting between lanes, nearly running down bicyclists and pedestrians and, in one stunning maneuvre, making the whole car vibrate as the wheels rubbed against the trolley tracks for a block or two.

Anyhow, we finally got to the hotel and unloaded the baggage. Mind you, it wasn't our hotel and when the bellman told us we weren't far from the one we had booked, Linda and I had to decide whether to drag our bags or force Traviso to put them back in the car and drive us to the right hotel.

It wasn't much of a decision. If he hadn't killed us already, he wasn't likely to for a few more blocks. And watching him reload the luggage (grunt, shove, mumble, curse) seemed the least we could do. Actually it was the least since we made him pay for his error by not paying any more for the last few blocks.

Down to breakfast now. Then the old church. Not sure what else I can do after that to keep Linda out of the shops. Maybe lots of discussion at breakfast about the world's credit crisis.