Milano!

Hey everyone!! So, first of all I want to say THANK YOU MOM (this is Ally) for the Hilton hotel in Milan. We looove it. The beds are super comfy and there is a great view and air conditioning and a bathroom to ourselves. Thanks :)
So, we went to Acqua al 2 for dinner our last night in Florence and it was delicious! Now Amanda and I have been to both locations!! The next day we went to the San Lorenzo Market to pick up some souvineers before we checked out of the hotel. OH! And we were finally awake in time to enjoy the breakfast at the hotel. It was pretty good with some cereal, bread, and nutella!! Yum. It was Amanda's first time tasting nutella and she loved it! Who would have thought there would be chocolate for breakfast :) After the short trek to the train station which actually took us a while because of all our luggage (really its not bad for 6 months, but it isn't fun to carry!!) we got on the train and settled in our seats for a couple hours. Amanda read and enjoyed the scenery while I just read because I really wanted to finish my book.
Milan is way bigger than Florence! It's beautiful though. Lots of big buildings and big streets. It is more metropolitan than Florence. There is also lots of vegetation. We weren't expecting it to be so green in a city! We checked in to our hotel and watched a movie in our spacious room with air conditioning (it's really hot here and the fan in Florence did not feel as good as air conditioning). Then we decided to go shopping and eat dinner. Lots of the stores were closed, but it was nice to window shop. The time here is way different than we are used to! The shops open and close at different times, they close during siesta in the afternoon, and they eat way later than Americans do! We didn't sit down for dinner last night until 9:30! And we went to a restaurant called Brickoven. It was a very American place but with Italian food and American food (like huge hamburgers!). We tried a new drink called Panaché which is beer and sprite mixed together. It was good-sweeter than we are used to when it comes to beer.
Today we went sight seeing in the center of Milan! The concierge told us to take the subway, but we thought walking would be fine! It only took about half an hour to arrive in the fashion district. They had everything from Armani to Prada to Foot Locker!

Amanda took pictures of the stores so we will add them to the blog when we can! We walked over to the Duomo- which is HUGE. It's gothic outside, and has tons of stained glass inside. It was all so beautiful! We'll add pictures of that too.

From there we walked to the Castello (castle) and on the other side of it is a park that reminded us of central park. We strolled all through it, taking pictures of the scenery and watching people play games/soak up the sun. We walked back through the fashion district and the weather went from sunny to rainy in a matter of minutes. There was thunder, but the freak storm passed quickly.
After that we headed back to the hotel and cleaned up before going out again. Then we went to a supermarket located at the train station -weird- and *YAY!!!* Amanda pointed out my favorite chocolate that we have been looking for!! It just tastes so good :)
Well, it's almost 9:30 so we should probably sign off the internet and go get some dinner!! Tomorrow we are leaving for camp!!! Switzerland, here we come!!!
Lots of love,
Ally and Amanda