Day 1 – Milan – Sunday June 27

It's 2:30am on Monday and I'm wide awake – downloading photos and starting our blog. Anne's wide awake too – planning what we're going to do today. I had hoped for a better result than that, given that we'd stayed up until 11pm, however, the “reviving” 2 hour nana nap in the afternoon must have been more reviving than we'd expected.

Getting here has been a breeze. Fly to Auckland on Friday night, overnight in the airport hotel, get to the airport first thing, catch the flight to Singapore, spend the couple of hours stopover in the Transit Hotel having a really good sleep and a shower. Fly to Milan, slept for 6 hours on the plane to arrive in Milan at 6:30am.

We caught the Malpensa Express (train) from the airport to the centre of Milan, then walked the 700 metres to the Hotel, so arrived there before 9am to drop off our bags. A coffee and a change of clothes later and we were out and about – heading back down to the castle

Kerry Prendergast was on the plane on the Auckland – Singapore leg, in economy class. I don't know if she was traveling on personal or official business, but I was pleased to see her in the back of the bus – it's a good sign for the way our rates dollars are being spent – maybe.

Milan is a business, rather than a tourist town and even the Italian Tourism web sites describe it as an optional place to visit. It was however, a place that despite 3 previous trips to Italy, we had never visited, so as it was our flying destination, we decided to have a couple of days there to get over our jet lag. There are a couple of key sites to visit and our hotel was right in the middle of them. First on the agenda was go to the castle – originally built in the 14th Century and modified, enhanced, besieged and trashed by various owners and offenders over the centuries. It currently houses a couple of galleries and museums and is now owned by the city of Milan. After 30 hours stuck in planes or an airport, it was nice to be out walking in the fresh air. At the back of the Castle is a big park, where people were out walking, sun bathing, playing soccer (don't mention the football), so Anne and I went for a walk round it for an hour.

On our way to the castle we had stopped off at Decathlon – the sporting megastore we discovered last year and the place where we will purchase all our camping gear for the next 5 weeks. Items purchased – 1 tent, 1 ground sheet, 1 table, 1 air bed, 2 pillows and 2 chairs – all for 150 Euros. The tent is self erecting, which I have no doubt it will be. What I have more doubt about is my ability to fold it back up into the nice circle that it originally started out as, and be able to fit it back into the car – but that saga won't be played out until next weekend, so what this space for updates on that python fighting task.

After the castle, we walked to the Duomo - Milan's magnificent white marble cathedral. The cathedral has been undergoing restoration work because it is amazingly clean on the outside. I imagine it's an ongoing task because the size of the cathedral and the detail that has gone into all the stone work on the outside would take years to complete an overall clean. Although there are some awnings covering the areas being worked on, it is apparently more viewable at the moment than it has been for years. By now it was early afternoon and there were huge crowds outside, so we decided to leave a visit inside the cathedral until Monday.

Beside the Duomo, is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – a huge shopping arcade set between two buildings with a steel reinforced glass roof completely enclosing it. Built in the 19th Century, it was the forerunner to shopping malls and is an amazing work of art. The tile mosaic floor is beautiful and the highlight is the bull (the symbol of Milan), which the locals use to ensure their continuing good luck by stomping on its testicles everytime they walk past. The area of his testicles is now just a hole in the ground, they've been stomped on so regularly. When we were there, there was a bus load of Japanese, each giving his nads a good old stomp.

By 3pm, it was time for a nap, so we set the alarm for 5pm and had a strict two hours sleep. The Concierge at the hotel recommended a nice area to go for dinner, which was about 15 minutes walk from the hotel and away from the main mall. We sat in a bar till about 9pm having a couple of beers and tapas, before hitting a nearby pizza restaurant and heading home ready for a nights sleep, which I've already mentioned earlier.