To Milan and home again

On Sunday morning, we checked out of the agriturismo and drove to Milan. Along the way, we stopped in Pisa and took a few goofy tourist shots of the Leaning Tower.

Our hotel for the last night was convenient to the airport. That meant that it was far from the city center, but close to the shores of Lake Maggiore. The hotel receptionist told us which lake towns were nearby, so we chose the closest one and set off. Within a few minutes, we were stuck in traffic. The cars were backed up even further in the other direction, so turning around didn't make sense. Finally, it hit us. This was Sunday afternoon, so everybody was leaving the lake to get back to the city. As Michigan natives who have seen weekend lake traffic, we probably should have figured that out sooner.

We did eventually make it to our destination, the town of Arona. We walked around a lakeside park.

Then we looked for a place to have dinner. My husband and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary, so we had been hoping to find a nice restaurant with lake views. We walked along the main street a bit, but there were no lakeside restaurants. There were very few restaurants to begin with, just a couple of outdoor food stands and bars with limited menus. We did find a place a few blocks away from the lake, though, and the traffic had thinned out by the time we had finished and set out for the hotel.

We woke up early the next morning to give ourselves plenty of time to eat breakfast, return the rental car, and get through security. We bought some snacks for the plane with our leftover Euro coins. We even had a celebrity sighting: Marky Ramone!

The flight home went smoothly, especially because we weren't worried about sleeping. My daughter slept for about an hour and watched kiddie movies the rest of the time. The ride home from Newark also went well, but we were getting pretty tired. We pulled into town, ate dinner, and went to bed. It was only 8 PM in Pennsylvania, but to us it felt like 2 AM Italian time.

Thanks for reading! Next I will review where we stayed and ate.