Delicious Milano (not the cookies)

We spent a relaxing morning at the apartment near Lake Garda, enjoying the playground despite a light rain. We then headed off to Milan for our final stop in Italy! We had booked an apartment through AirBnB and arranged a time to meet our host. Of course, as we were driving into Milan, he texted that he would not be able to be there to meet us, but that he had left the keys with the concierge. Life is always more complicated when you don't speak the language in the country... and alas, this was one of those cases. We miraculously found a tiny parking space right in front of the apartment, and I hopped out to find the concierge. I easily found her, but she spoke only Italian - no English, French, Spanish, or German. After several failed attempts (which almost made me give up and decide I had the wrong place), we did manage to successfully communicate that I was renting an apartment and could she let me in. She did! All was well, and just as we were leaving the apartment to explore Milan, our host did show up. He was incredibly nice (and the first Italian Leonardo that we met). He tried to help us pay the special Milan driving tax required for bring a car in the city. However, after we paid the 5 Euro, he realized that since our license plates are French we did not have to pay. He also mentioned essentially that there is no way that the Italians will ever track us down for any traffic infringements. If only we'd known earlier, we would have driven incredibly fast and skipped the numerous and expensive tolls on Italian highways!

The boys were excited to check out an old game of Connect Four, which was missing the critical stand to hold up the playing board. The game wasn't as exciting as pretending the Connect Four pieces were money and performing various tricks so that I would throw the money into their hats. Sammy was quite possessive of his "money," especially when Lanna tried to eat it.

There was still a light rain, so we headed out in our rain gear. The boys enjoyed their new umbrellas, purchased from the market near Katherine's apartment in Rome. We definitely got our 12 Euro worth so far from that purchase. Joey has the Ninja Turtles, and Sammy has Spiderman (not pictured, since he was being carried by Jay who was also using said Spiderman umbrella).

We walked and walked through the streets of Milan, passing by the famous opera house La Scala and a statue of Leonardo DaVinci. We then decided to take a shortcut to the Duomo square through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, listed online as 

A 18th century structure it now encompasses the most expensive restaurants and stores as well as is the connecting link between Duomo and La Scala. You might not be the one who could get a front seat at the Milan Fashion Week, but surely can visit all the cream of the crop stores such as Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Roberto Cavalli, Prada, Valentino, etc.

We would never even consider fancy shopping or Milan Fashion week even without our three children, but we really enjoyed walking through the Galleria and admiring the fancy (Mercedes store) and not so fancy (toy cars in a memorabilia shop) good. We also enjoyed being out of the rain!

I decided to try out my arm as a selfie-stick for Joey, Lanna and me. Then Jay and Sammy squeezed into the picture too! As you can see, I look completely crazed with the pressure of fitting all of us into the photo! And there is some random guy stuck in the background...

We then passed through the Galleria into the Duomo square and marveled at the size of the Duomo!

We did not brave the lines to get tickets to go in, as we were wet, tired, and hungry. But we did enjoy the square, which was FULL of pigeons! This is mostly because there were men there with seeds to feed them. One of these men trapped Joey, who did really want to feed the pigeons, and gave him some seeds to hold in his hand. Joey was immediately flooded with pigeons who at the seeds out of his hand. This man unfortunately did not provide this service for free as a good samaritan, and he clearly needed to be paid. We looked at our available change and gave him 1.5 Euro, which I thought was decent for a handful of seeds and a few minutes work. After all, feeding the birds in Mary Poppins only cost tuppence (2 cents) a bag. Even with inflation, 1.5 Euro for a handful seemed appropriate. He expressed his extreme lack of satisfaction at how little we paid him, but luckily he stopped after only a sentence that did not involve any foul language. We now will make a stronger effort to avoid the pigeon seed men.

We rebounded from that experience with a Duomo selfie. Jay is looking a little more crazed than usual here, It seems like whoever is trying to take a picture of 5 people (including 3 kids) with just an arm as a tool winds up with a crazy expression. Maybe we should just buy a selfie stick after all (although we did hear that more people died in selfie stick related accidents than from shark attacks this year).

After one last Duomo panorama (with the Galleria on the left), a little song and dance from the boys with their umbrellas, and we headed off to dinner.

We trudged through the rain, past our apartment, to a steak restaurant recommended as the best steakhouse in Europe by my cousin Mike Borkan. We got there just a few minutes after 7 and were the first ones there (they still were setting up). This was ideal for us, since the kids could drive their cars and Lanna could toddle about without disturbing anyone else. We ordered the T-bone, which was reported to be gigantic, and split it amongst the 5 of us (with a salad to assuage our guilt). It was incredibly delicious and enjoyed by all!

We then took our full stomachs home for a good night's rest.