"Anyone else find it funny that we're going to spend this whole trip looking for T.I.?"

Buongiorno!

We made it here to das boot safe and sound, with no hiccups..except for the 20 minutes in the Frankfurt airport when E-Roc thought she wouldnt be able to have a ciggy. But we found her a designated cancer stick area, and all was well. The flight went by suuuuuper fast. We discussed our hopes and dreams, explored our personal histories, discussed career and family goals and pretty much ran out of stuff to talk about for the next 13 days...so it's been an awkward day.

I kid, I kid.

We thought our hotel in Milan would be our most luxiurious. Not so much. Hotel Florida is not quite as swank as the pictures of the lobby make it seem, and we were welcomed with news that we were going to be charged an additional 35 euro for a triple (this is a good time to mention that I'm insisting we refer to all money as "Benjis" because saying euros sounds so nerdy). Anyways, we dropped our stuff down, recouped for 30 minutes and then headed out to see some shit. We hit Milan's Duomo, the second largest cathedral in Italy (#1 being that one the pope uses), the La Scala Opera House, ate risotto and pizza, Sforza Castle, ate gelato, and saw Da Vinci's Last Supper. A couple notes on these things:

-Sforza Castle was awesome (The Sforzas are Milan's Medicis). But even more awesome was that when you exited the back side of the castle there was a carnival going on. We'd decided to forgo paying to see any of the castle's museums (something i think will be a theme for this trip), but instead paid 2.50 benjis to ride the swings. If we go back again we're hitting trampoline land fo sho.

-There was a lot of arguing about who was Judas in the Last Supper. I was right. Steezer being right has been a theme of the trip so far (Can you believe I was just at work this morning?)

-Any time there is a language barrier, E-Roc and I give Liza a terrified look and she pipes in with the Espanol. That always seems to help. As soon as I'm done typing here, we're going to practice some Italian, because I won't lie...it's been an issue.

Obviously seeing The Last Supper made us hella hungry. On the way back to Florida we grabbed some stuff for our first supper (E-Roc would like to claim credit for that joke): goat cheese, bread, prociutto, pears and two liters of wine for a grand total of.....12 Benjis. We had a little picnic in the hotel room. Delish.

Tomorrow morning we depart for Venice, where we will meet up with LJ and MBA. En route to Venice we're going to hop off the train and do a walking tour of Verona. I also should mention that there is one man with us on this trip: Rick Steves. Rick, we love ya.

Current wine consumption tally (and yes, we've been on the road 36 hours):
E-Roc: 13
Steez: 13
Liza: 12 (she's minus one for spillage on the plane. I'm sorry...those are the rules.)

Gelato Quest:
As a personal favor to our buddy Rick, we'll be rating gelato in each city. Today E-Roc and Liza enjoyed some chocolate and coffee gelato from a caffe across from The Last Supper (I opted for espresso because I was starting to see dragons). Without much to compare to yet, they're giving it an 8 on the basis of richness, consistency, flavor and all around mood-altering ability. This is not necessarily a ten point scale.

A few pics to come.