Long weekend

Ah... it is times like the last 4 days that make the whole long distance time worthwhile. A. did not have class on Thursday and Friday so I had bought tickets for us to go to Italy. Well, I still had to find an excuse not to go to work on those days, since there was no break for me. Opportunity arose in an email exchange with my boss on Wednesday morning, when I "casually" said I'd work from home the next 2 days. He didn't ask anything else, and therefore "working from home" was the best I could come up with. That was good enough for me, so on that evening I took the flight to Milan and met A. at 11pm when he arrived on his flight from Paris. Not bad!

A. in front of the Duomo in Milan.

We took the bus to the city, found our hotel and crashed. Next day we slept until noon (actually, A. slept until noon and I tried to do some emailing for work... to keep the bosses content) and then wandered around the city. We saw the Duomo (cathedral) and then the Castello Sforzesco, which was from where the Sforzesco family ruled the region. They are both quite impressive. At night we decided to try some real Italian food (aka pizza) and ended up being quite disappointed when the cook walked by... he was Chinese!!

Pizza in hand and ready to board the train!

The next day we did some lazying around the hotel and then went off to the train station. A. was impressed at how I understood the Italian ticket vendor ranting off in Italian about the time of the trains, the tickets, etc. It definitely pays off to know some other Latin languages ;o) We took the train to Venice and arrived mid afternoon.

First view right off the train in Venice.

And Venice is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! I thought so the first time I went several years back, but going back now only made me like it more. A. had not been there and also loved it. It is like a huge city-sized maze formed by over 100 islands with canals cutting through them and bridges to cross at strategic points. We loved just walking randomly in any direction and then, when completely lost, following the next group of tourists, checking our map or just walking some more until a landmark popped out of nowhere. It is a magical place, full of history, past wealth and amazing architecture, and all decently preserved too!!

Me! Roaming around Venice.

We had a great 4 days. And like so many times we meet these days there seems to be no nagging, no annoying each other, just really enjoying time together. And yes, all this comes at the price of being apart during the week, but most probably we would not be traveling as much if we lived together. How many weekends did we just pass on the couch, postponing the cleaning and doing some cooking? Too many! It is just so easy to stick to routine... But now that we have to put in the effort of travel to see each other we are doing more, both in terms of showing the other around the place we live but also enjoying discovering all the quirks Europe has to offer! And may there be many more to come!

Venice by night.