James & Vilija

About a week and a half ago, we received an e-mail from James’ dad with a message from a family friend (Rod). Rod had worked with the MSO and generously arranged tickets for us to see the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the last of their European concerts in Milan. Incredibly surprised and excited, we organised ourselves to go and see the concert. We estimated that the 4.19 train from Genova on Friday afternoon should deliver us to Milan with 2 hours to spare. Once there we would go to our hotel room (the last train for Genova left too early), get ready and head out. Well, thanks yet again Trenitalia, we arrived an hour late. Managed to navigate the Milanese public transport system to our hotel, got dressed in a world record time of 5 minutes and were out the door and in a taxi on our way to the concert across town. (more…)

August, empty august… Its a time when Europe shuts down, everybody goes on holidays and normally buzzing metropolises become ghost towns complete with rolling tourists being blown down the main street by a hot northerly wind. At risk of boredom we decided to join the mass temporary migration and planned a holiday to Corsica & Paris with Vilija’s friend from Paris, James (henceforth referred to as Paris James) and his girlfriend Malene.

Stage one in the grand plan was to meet Paris James in Milano. He arrived on a cattle plane (mistakenly labeled as Ryan Air) from Paris and we wondered around Milano, the first real time for all of us. This was our first introduction to Europe in mid August. The Sydney of Italia was empty, streets that were death traps when I was there waiting for my flight last time were perfect spots for a spot of backyard cricket. (more…)