Mim & Ian’s travel blog

Last weekend we went to Gothenburg to visit our friends Steph and Karl. We had planned this trip back in June so our anticipation was quite high. When we arrived at Gothenburg City airport, it was relatively early around 10am and it was bucketing down with rain. We took a 30 minute airport shuttle directly to Nil Ericsson Terminalen to meet Steph and Karl near the town centre. Gothenburg actually has another airport called Landvetter Airport which is the main airport, around 30 airlines like SAS and Lufthansa use this airport. As Gothenburg City Airport is smaller, this seems to be for budget airlines like Ryanair and Wizz Air.

Rain cleared soon after we arrived at the entrance of the Nil Ericsson Terminalen. As soon as we hopped off the bus, straight away I spotted a familiar face in a bright red jacket with the biggest grin. I couldn’t believe I was seeing our friends in Gothenburg, it was so good to see them again! It started raining so we hopped in the car while evaluating our next move. We had several options: check out the town centre and have lunch, see the ‘Lipstick’ building, go shopping or visit the Saab museum, all of which were fantastic ideas. With Steph’s optimism that the rain would clear, we decided to see the ‘Lipstick’ building. This building is actually called Skanskahuset (or Skanska House) built in 1989 by architects Ralph Erskine and Heikki Saerg, its nickname came purely because of its resemblance to a lipstick For 30SEK, we caught a lift to 16th floor to the 360° viewing platform.

Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden after Stockholm the capital city. Geographically Gothenburg is a quite flat, which explains why Gothenburg’s Skyscraper is the tallest building in the city has only 17 floors.

After the view of Gothenburg, Karl drove through lots of ring roads and eventually we found ourselves in the town centre.

For lunch, we had authentic Swedish food Ian had some crumbed fried fish with tartare sauce and salad on the side, forgot what it was called. I tried the Pyttipanna which is chopped and fried meat with onions, potatoes and fried eggs. It seems quite common that restaurants have all-you-can-eat salad with all mains. The salad bar included Swedish cabbage, corn, beetroot, broad beans, carrots and crispbreads (similar to vita breads).

As we wandered around the streets of Gothenburg, we walked pass various landmarks like Gothenburg Opera, Gotaplatsen (cultural center of Gothenburg which houses a number of theaters and art centers) and the Poseidon statue which is also in the square. We also saw the Fish Church, yes that’s right, it was a church converted to a fish market. There were an exceptional range of seafoods, hams, cheeses and sausages. The Fish Church (or Feske Korka) was created in 1874 and it was given the name of Fish Church because of the building’s pointed roof.

Lucky for us, the Gothenburg Cultural Festival was on so there was plenty to do. Steph showed us around town and we found a craft market tucked away in one of the alleyways. Some of these stores have their appeal as they have kept the decor as is and you can find knick knacks, lollies and even stationery from ages ago.

We had a break and had afternoon coffee with kanelbulle (cinnamon roll) at one of the cafes inside the Gothenburg Botanical Garden. Then for the rest of the afternoon, Karl suggested that we go to Liseberg, Gothenburg’s renowned amusement park. It was first opened in 1923 and is the largest among the Nordic countries. We bought entry tickets to the park then bought additional tokens to go on the 3 roller-coasters. And I have to say the best one out of the 3 was the wooden roller-coaster Balder. We had a really nice dinner at one of the restaurants within Liseberg.

Around the theme park, there were numerous game stands with huge number-wheels which spin and if you happen to pick the right number, you win this really big 1 metre block of chocolate (e.g. Plopp, Kex, Toblerone, etc.). Some stands had huge bags of chips but we didn’t want those. Great marketing strategy by the chocolate companies, so many people were lugging the chocolates in their arms, quite proudly I might add, so we thought we’d try our luck. After 5 attempts, we gave up and left.

We stayed at Karl & Steph’s place on Saturday night (thanks so much for having us guys!) and then took it easy on Sunday. For brunch we had something really Swedish – it is called Sill which is pickled herring. It looks like fish, smells slightly fishy but not too overpowering and tastes like pickles! As Karl showed us, it compliments warm boiled potatoes quite well. Before heading back to Gothenburg Airport, we managed to take a relaxing stroll around the streets of Borås which was nice.

All in all, I have really enjoyed Gothenburg and Borås. It was great to catching up with our friends and finding out the true meaning of the word ‘Gothenburgers’ In such a short time, I have learnt Sweden has much to offer, from architecture and nature to culture and history. I would really like to go back and see more of Sweden, perhaps Stockholm next

I’m on yet another train. This time it’s a 2.5 hour one, so I have time to write yet again. I’m actually on the way back from a customer meeting in Leeds. I could have written this entry on the way to Leeds, but it was too early (6:30am) so I took a nap.

As usual, I’m not talking about the weekend that just went past. We were actually in Sweden, but Mimi’s going to blog about that. Unfortunately, we’re always playing catch-up with our blog posts.

It’s fitting that I’m writing about this now because we were actually on this train 2 weekends ago (August 3-5). We spent that weekend visiting our friends Aarti and Seth in Bradford where they live. Bradford is near Leeds so the way there is to typically take the Leeds train from London Kings Cross station (which by the way is where Harry Potter boards the train to Hogwarts) and change at Leeds to a Bradford train. Be warned that the train tickets do cost a fair bit if you don’t book early. We had to book about 3-4 weeks in advance to get the tickets at the heavily discounted price (go to GNER’s site and follow the links to the discounted fares). If you buy your tickets closer to the date, you end up paying close to full price (which is what I did for today, but it was a last minute thing and work pays so that’s ok). Heavily discounted tickets have the disadvantage of locking you into a specific train at a specific time, but that’s no different to restricted plane tickets. In other words, it’s not really a big deal if you have a trip planned in advance like we did.

We arrived there on the Friday night because we needed to leave relatively early on Saturday morning for the activities Aarti and Seth had planned for us. The problem was that we both had to work and couldn’t leave London until 8pm, so we arrived in Bradford close to midnight. At which point Aarti and Seth picked us up from the station and proceeded to have dinner. Yeah I too was surprised that they managed to wait until midnight to have dinner. We told them not to wait for us…but as usual, they didn’t listen

The next morning, we woke up bright and early…or at least we tried to. We actually didn’t end up leaving until 10 or 11am because we had breakfast and also packed some sandwiches for lunch. She also put me to work in the kitchen and had me bake some Anzac biscuits from the remainder of the leftover mixture she had from the previous day. After some discussion, we decided to go to the Lake District, which is where the locals like to go in the summertime for a short break. We had to pick a specific part to go to because it’s actually quite large. We actually headed towards Kendal and ended up at Bowness-on-Windemere because we just followed the signs to the “Lake District river cruises”.

We weren’t really sure what to expect as we hadn’t really heard too much about the Lake District prior to the weekend. The weather wasn’t kind on us either. It was pouring all day long and took about 2 hours to drive there from Bradford (including a few wrong turns at the beginning thanks to map reading extraodinaire Aarti ) We got to see quite a bit of the English countryside. Nothing too different to what I’d seen on the trains. Flat, greenish (although not quite as green as New Zealand or the Netherlands) and rather unimpressive. Seth kept reminding us about how much prettier the Scottish countryside is compared to the English one (he lived in Scotland during his uni days). We had to take his word as Scotland is still on our to-do list. We actually stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. We didn’t actually buy lunch from the place. We only had coffee while sheepishly eating our packed sandwiches. Luckily they didn’t mind and didn’t boot us out, despite the disapproving side glances from the other diners.

We eventually arrived and were surprised by the sheer number of people walking around given the weather. There were a few tour buses parked by the roadside, so that probably had something to do with it. There also happened to be a fair which probably brought the locals out too. Having no real plans or an agenda, we simply wandered around and took in the sights and sounds. We briefly considered taking a lake cruise, but decided against it because of the weather. A cold, foggy, wet cruise wasn’t our idea of a good time.

In the end, we went to the information centre to get a better idea of the things we could conceivably do despite the weather. Being rather late in the day, we decide to visit the World of Beatrix Potter as it didn’t seem like the type of thing that would take too long. Actually, us guys didn’t really have much of a say. The girls just decided that was what we wanted to do and asked us out of courtesy. Seth watched 10 minutes of a documentary in a screening room while I walked around and looked at souvenirs while they evaluated the options and made the decisions.

For those that are unaware, Beatrix Potter was one of the Lake District’s more notable residents. She was an author/artist best known for her children’s books. Peter Rabbit is perhaps the best known of her works. She was also more recently immortalised on film by Renee Zellweger in “Miss Potter“, the hollywood movie about her life. The exhibit wasn’t too bad actually. It was essentially a winding corridor surrounded by scenes and characters with the accompanying story to go with each scene. And by scene I mean actual objects and inanimate characters that you could touch (although they discouraged people from doing that). For those that have been to Disney World or Disneyland, it was sort of like walking through Toon Town, but indoors and on a MUCH smaller scale. There were also stories and images about Beatrix Potter and the people surrounding her in her life, including a large picture of Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor from the movie. The kids (and Japanese tourists) looked to be having a lot of fun and really enjoyed it. Seth and I were less impressed, but that’s not to say we disliked it. The girls took AGES because they just had to take a picture of absolutely everything in there. They even became part of certain scenes, like in a particular one where there was a small kitchen and one of the characters serving tea. They each took their turn at being a guest at the table. So while Seth and I walked ahead wondering what the girls were doing, they were sitting down having a pretend tea party with Beatrix Potter characters.

By the time we were done, it was rather late and we were pretty tired from the long drive. Seth was probably more tired than anyone because he had to do the driving (No one else could help drive because his car’s a manual). We had dinner at an Indian restaurant in Bradford which wasn’t too bad, except for the chicken dish (forgot the name so Aarti or Seth if you’re reading this, please remind me via a comment) which tasted more like a dessert because it was just too sweet. In the end, we pretty much had to be kicked out because we got into a rather long and involved discussion about religion and superstition. Very unlike me to get involved in something like that…but I guess I didn’t want to simply sit there and watch everyone else talk. We had to stop because the restaurant was closing. Of course, festivities didn’t end there.

This next part will probably cause a lot of comment spam from all the automated online systems that search blogs specifically to insert context relevant “advertising”, but I’m not going to let that stop me. Hopefully the WordPress Akismet spam filter successfully catches all the undesirable comments in response to this.

Aarti and Seth wanted to learn to play poker so we got back to their place at around midnight and proceeded to run them through the rules. We used Seth’s old 1 and 2 pence coins as poker chips/play money. I don’t really know why he had bags full of these coins, but at least they came in useful. We obviously weren’t playing for real money (we never do), so it was just for fun…and boy did Seth and Aarti get into it. They both started to participate and initiate the playful banter that is normal for a poker game and very quickly understood it’s not really about how good your cards are. Quick learners Problem was that we didn’t finish the game until 4:30am…which meant that waking up on Sunday at a decent hour was not going to happen.

At about 2pm on Sunday, we finally decided to get our tired selves out of bed and salvage what was left of Sunday. To our disappointment, it was really sunny! And we weren’t planning on going anywhere. Why couldn’t it have been sunny on Saturday and rain on Sunday?!

Seth had some work to do so he rushed off to do it and materialised at about 3:30pm. Meanwhile, the rest of us spent the hour and a half having breakfast…well, lunch really. Our train back to London was at 5pm, so that didn’t leave us much time. So guess what Aarti suggested we do? That’s right…a quick game of poker! It was fun of course, but I now constantly give Aarti grief about it. I catch her online quite often playing the online poker game on Facebook.

All in all, it was a fun weekend with good friends and a couple of children storybook characters.

We certainly didn’t intend on having an English weekend, let alone a quintessential high brow upper class one. It just fell into place by sheer coincidence. This actually happened a week ago (July 27-29) but we hadn’t had a chance to get around to writing about it until now.

It started on Friday the 27th of July when we had dinner at the Michelin Star rated Savoy Grill (owned by Gordon Ramsay) located within the Savoy Hotel, which is yet another famous London Hotel of historical significance. We had intended to go “cheap” by booking online through toptable.co.uk, which we use quite often to search for good deals at restaurants.

This time, they had a “deal” – 3 courses for £30, which is half the price of what they usually charge…or so we thought. One thing I’m starting to notice about toptable is that in a lot of cases, they simply advertise the existing deal at the restaurant online and the “discount” is in no way exclusive to people who book on toptable (yes in some cases you get a free glass of champagne if you book through them). We found this out when we got to the restaurant. No, not free champagne. Just the pre-theatre menu for £30 or the full menu for £60. This pre-theatre menu was especially threadbare (even more so than the usual pre-theatre menus at other fine dining restaurants). So we decided to splurge and go the full menu.

It was obviously very nice. If it wasn’t we would have had something to say about the exorbitant amount we had to pay. I will say one thing though…we’ve had better food in some of Sydney’s fine dining restaurants. Now we haven’t had a meal in too many of London’s (or even Europe’s) fine dining places, but if this is anything to go by, you’ll be hard pressed to find better value for money than one gets in Sydney’s fine dining restaurants.

From July 28 to September 28 each year, Buckingham Palace opens its doors to the public…for a price. We’d been earlier in the year but only looked from the outside. Mimi had booked the tickets online (go here to book them if you happen to be in town) in advance to ensure we got in and could plan for it in advance. We bought the Royal Day Out tickets which covers the State Rooms, the Royal Mews and the Queen’s Gallery.

You can actually buy tickets at the door, but you may not necessarily get the viewing time you want. For example, you may turn up at 9 to buy tickets but they’ll tell you that you can’t enter the Queen’s Gallery until 11:30, which means you’ll find yourself with a few spare hours for which you have to find something else to do (Knightsbridge is just round the corner and Regent and Oxford Streets are a short walk for those retail therapy inclined). Buying them online also means that you can go visit the State Rooms and Royal Mews whenever you want as long as you do it on the day and before closing time. If you buy tickets there, they actually give you an entrance time. The whole thing took us about half a day. We started at 9:30am and were done by lunchtime. I won’t go into too many details, but here are my very brief impressions of each:

• Queen’s Gallery – If you’ve been to a large art gallery or museum, it’s not particularly impressive. It’s rather small. The most impressive thing about it is that all the art is owned by a single person (the Queen).
• Royal Mews – Bunch of stables, horses and royal carriages. The carriages are the ones you see on TV during official events (e.g. royal weddings), so they are very ornate and impressive. Not much else there, unless you are equine inclined.
• State Rooms – Now this was impressive. The palace has 4 wings. The public rooms (i.e. the state rooms), staff quarters, offices and royal residences. The tour only takes you through the public areas, but they are mighty impressive. We weren’t allowed to take photos but take a look at the website to get an idea, then multiply that effect ten-fold. It’s probably not as grand or historic looking as some of the other castles around Europe, but Buckingham Palace isn’t a castle. It’s just a REALLY BIG HOUSE in the middle of London with REALLY EXPENSIVE fittings, furniture, antiques and historical artifacts.

On to Sunday 29th July. Some of our friends had decided that they wanted to experience one of the most English of sports in the world (even though it was first played in Persia). One usually only played by royal families and nobility. By “experience” I mean from a spectator’s point of view. To actually play this sport, you need to be from a well-to-do family and also be able to ride a horse (and do it very well). If you haven’t guessed it, I’m talking about Polo. The sport where grown men chase a little white ball with stick-like implements (yeah I know they are called mallets) while riding horses. If you’ve ever watched under 8s junior soccer (where all the kids from both teams crowd around the ball and chase it wherever it goes), imagine them on horses and chasing the ball with sticks. I’m probably showing my Polo-ignorance with my comments, but I’m in no hurry to try to understand this so-called sport.

The event we were actually attending was the Cartier International Polo Tournament at Guards Polo Club. The initial plan was to book grandstand tickets for £30 (if memory serves me correctly) but they were sold out by the time we got around to it. So we decided to have a picnic and watch from the standing areas. In hindsight, it was a good thing we didn’t buy tickets. The view was fine from where we were.

Getting there was a story in itself. According to the tournament website, there are various ways to get there:

Public Transport
By Rail: Windsor & Eton Riverside Station from Waterloo – approx 3.7 miles from Gate R (Rangers) Sunningdale Station from Waterloo – approx 2.2 miles from Gate B (Blacknest) Egham Station from Waterloo – approx 4.5 miles from Gate B (Blacknest) Windsor Central Station via Slough from Paddington – approx 3.7 miles from Gate R (Rangers) A taxi will then be required to get to Guards Polo Club.
By Air: Heathrow Airport (10 miles drive)
By Helicopter: Please call Coworth Park on 01344875155 for permission to land. Coworth Park is 5 minutes away from the event by car.

The main thing I want to point out is the last one. Helicopter?! If the fact that the major sponsor is Cartier isn’t enough of an indication at the level of pretentious crap we’re dealing with here, then the helicopter should do it. So because our helicopter was being serviced and Richard Branson wasn’t available to loan us his, we went for the train + taxi option.

We took the train from London Paddington to Windsor and Eton Central. The same Windsor where the castle is and the same Eton as the Eton College where Princes William and Harry attended school. From there, we were supposed to have taxis booked to get to the grounds. Long story short, they didn’t show despite repeated efforts by the girls to chase them up. Apparently there was a huge traffic jam getting into the grounds and leaving the grounds, so all the taxi companies had over-booked themselves. We weren’t the only ones. There were countless others trying to get to the grounds. You could tell because they were all dressed up like they were going to the races (yeah, there’s a dress code as well).

We eventually found a dodgy cab driver (they don’t only exist in Asia, there are lots here in London too) willing to take us to the grounds for a negotiated fee. We bargained him down from £40 to £25 (we later found out that other people got cabs in for £15). The problem was that there were too many of us to fit into the one cab, so the rest went while Mimi and I waited for another cab (we were a little late, so it was only fair that the others went first). No cab came so the same one that took the first lot of us came back. Along the way, he stopped by the taxi rank and picked up 2 random people. In the end he charged us £10 each (£40 for him, but slightly cheaper for us overall). On the way to the ground, one of our friends called to tell us to tell the driver to drop us nearer to the ground. Apparently the reason he managed to come back to get us so quickly was because he had a “super secret” way into the grounds. What he didn’t tell us was that the “super secret” way stopped a long way outside the ground because they were only allowing a single path in and this was jammed for miles. He assured us it was only a short walk. How wrong he was. The others had asked one of the “car ushers” how long the walk was. Each one said 1.5 miles…and they were standing roughly 200 metres from each other. Eventually they stopped asking and just walked. In heels. I was wearing my leather work shoes so it wasn’t exactly comfortable either. Luckily Mimi was wearing relatively low heels so she didn’t get bogged down in the mud (or horse S$*#) along the way.

My thought processes on the walk in went something like this:

“This sucks. I should have stayed at the station and gone to Windsor Castle for the day”.
“BMW”
“Jaguar”
“Are Mimi’s heels stuck in the mud yet? No. Keep walking.”
“BMW”
“Non-dodgy Taxi”
“Mercedes”
“Ooh, Ford”
“Are we there yet?”
“BMW”
“Audi”
“Lexus”
“Limousine”
“Are Mimi’s heels stuck in the mud yet? No. Keep walking.”
“Non-dodgy Taxi”
“Mercedes”
“Porsche”
“Ooh, Toyota”
“Porsche”
“Lamborghini”
“Watch out for the horse S*&$”.
“BMW”
“Ferrari”
“What are these idiots in the cars staring at?”
“Oh, the fools walking along the road.”
“Hey hang on…we’re the fools they’re staring at!”
“Lexus”
“Mercedes”
“Oh nice. More horse S*$&”.
“Lamborghini”
“Non-dodgy Taxi”
“Are Mimi’s heels stuck in the mud yet? No. Keep walking.”
“Porsche”
“Are we there yet”
“Wonder if that nice couple will give us a ride on their horses”
“Oh look, other fools walking”
“Limousine”
“Lamborghini”
“Porsche”
“BMW”
“Mercedes”
“Where’s a frigging helicopter when you need one?”
“Is that car usher laughing at us?”
“Where are the others? They can’t have walked that much faster than us. They’re in heels for goodness sake!”
“BMW”
“Mercedes”
“Lexus”
“Are we there yet?”
“I don’t believe I’m walking all this way to see a frigging Polo Match.”

You get the idea. About an hour later (I’m not exaggerating), we got to the car park. Yeah, the car park. Not the grounds. We could see the grounds though, so that was a good sign. As we walked through the car park, we saw lots of people having picnics by their cars. Many had pitched tents, were dressed in their Sunday best and chugging down on their French Champagne. We just kept walking. We eventually found our friends, who had pitched themselves just off to the side of the field right next to a bunch of Aussies, a bunch of New Zealanders, 2 American girls reading the latest Harry Potter book and another bunch of Aussies. Hardly a British accent in sight. I think they were all in the Cartier hospitality tent. Either that or the Audi hospitality tent. Or perhaps they were still having picnics next to their over-priced cars. Trust a bunch of us Aussies and New Zealanders to be roughing it out in the cheap seats (i.e. free).

The atmosphere was very much like a horse race. Very well dressed people doing one of 3 things. Getting drunk, getting bored or getting picked up. It was a veritable meat market for the rich and well-to-do. From where I was sitting, it looked like the desperate and dateless ball for pretentious rich people. The Polo match was just background noise, not the centrepiece. In fact the 2 American girls next to us reading the Harry Potter books did not once get up off the ground to look at what was happening on the field. It was as if they went on a picnic in a nice area to read their books in peace and all these pretentious people decided to have a party and hold a Polo match right next to them. It was more fun watching what people were doing than actually paying attention to the match. I saw people in the stands falling asleep, almost falling out of their chairs, getting up and leaving to go to the port-a-loos, or to get a drink…others sitting there talking to each other oblivious to the fact that there were a bunch of guys on horses chasing a ball around with sticks. Oh, did I mention the bunch of rich kids sitting in the stands throwing food at people in the crowd? Funny to watch. Not funny when one of the projectiles almost hit us (no hard feelings kids – you kept me amused).

We did do the halftime divot stomping that is traditional at all Polo matches. This is where the crowd walks onto the field during the interval to fill in all the holes dug up by all these darn horses running around. Mimi and one of the other friends walked into each other and spilled wine all over her top and in the process ruined it. She was not a happy camper when she couldn’t wash the stain off when we got back…and an even unhappier camper when she washed off too much of the stain and lost some of the print. Stupid stain remover!

Incidentally, England were playing Chile and the score ended up being 9-8. England lost. The most bizarre thing was that the commentators/ground announcers were Aussies. They were the best thing about the whole event. There were Aussie mannerisms and quotes that the real Polo fans probably found to be uncultured. The rest of us loved the commentary. It provided some much needed colour to the proceedings. Thankfully, the weather was great so that at least kept the whole thing tolerable. I also kept trying to treat it as a nice day out in the park (a really crowded one) while having a picnic with some friends. Next time you want to get me out for a picnic, don’t make me go to a Polo match

At the conclusion of the match, countless people from the stands decided they would rip off the Cartier sponsor signs from the border around the field and take them home as souvenirs. These weren’t small signs mind you. I’m sure we’ve all seen sponsor signs at events. Yeah, them big ones. Very classy, people.

The journey back to London was comparatively speedy, apart from having to hunt for a cab that would take us away from the ground at a reasonable price. It also took us longer than we expected because they cancelled one of the London bound trains and we had to wait an extra half hour. Normally this would have been Ian-long-whinge-blog-post worthy in itself, but it paled in comparison to the rest of the day. So I wasn’t too fussed about this bit apart from the fact we were almost an hour late for dinner with my cousins in Chinatown (sorry guys, now you know why we were late).

I’m not saying I won’t ever go back to the Polo. Maybe I’ll give the “sport of kings” another chance…once my helicopter’s back from being serviced.

On the weekend 23-24th June, we caught an early 6:10am flight from Stansted airport to Bergamo airport. We were going to Milan – one of the fashion capitals of the world! Ian was quite excited with anticipation, he even thought our hand-carry bag might not be big enough. I assured him that everything would be too expensive so he didn’t need to worry.

From the Bergamo airport, we took an hour bus ride (pre-booked through Terravision) to Centrale train station. Once we got off the bus, you guessed it, we headed straight to Buenos Aires Avenue, Milan’s local shopping district. This was indeed a shopping paradise. This road is really long, 1.7km to be exact and it stretches from Loreto to Lima then Porta Venezia intersection (all of which are connected by the metro). Luckily we had anticipated the amount of exercise we were doing that day so both of us had walking shoes on We even walked as far as Via Della Spiga and Via Monte Napoleone Street, where all the expensive designer labels have their main shops. By the time we wandered to Duomo Square, we were absolutely exhausted!

Thanks to Ian’s complimentary voucher at any Hyatt hotels, we stayed for free at the Milan Park Hyatt which was conveniently close to Duomo Square. We were literally minute away from the beautiful Milan Cathedral, second biggest church in the world (after Saint Peter’s Basilica) and also second biggest Gothic cathedral in the world (after Cathedral of Seville). Going up to the roof is a must! It costs 6 EUR. You can either catch a lift from the back of the cathedral or walk 240 steps up. The view of the Gothic architecture from the rooftop is absolutely magnificent!

On Sunday, we took it easy and decided to walk from Duomo Square. While having our delicious gelato, we walked along the cobble street of Via Dante then we heard beautiful harmonic sounds of accordions, playing the tunes of William Tell Overture (or if you want to be amused, click here) by a very much synchronised father-and-son band. Eventually we entered the grounds of Castello Sforzesco, it used to be a castle for the Austrian Empire but now it is an art museum. Walking along the footpath in the courtyard was a strange experience in itself, not only did we see many hawkers selling fake handbags and we also saw a man with long curly beard in a Chinese long dress, sitting on a stool and playing an instrument called “yee-woo” (which is a 2-string Chinese fiddle)?! Definitely not what I had expected to see. Further inside was a huge garden, spotted with picnickers enjoying the beautiful weather. After our tour of the castle, we caught the metro to Loreto and made our way to Buenos Aires Avenue for the rest of the afternoon. We had tasty Italian pasta/pizzas on both nights and gelato for dessert

Our flight back was delayed, it was supposed to take off at 8pm but we didn’t leave till 9:30pm, which meant we didn’t get back to London till 10:30pm, waited an hour and a half at the immigration counters then had to take a bus and finally got back around 2am. This was when Ian had a hectic morning trying to book taxi at 3am for his flight to Amsterdam the every same morning. And I had to work at 8!