Unfortunately the wifi had not been working. My phone could see the router, but the router could not see the internet. I had trouble telling the hotel management about the problem. Anne had found me an old Italian phrase book, circa 1968 but it didn’t have a phrase for “the wifi isn’t working”. A phone call to the provider fixed it while I was checking out.
Breakfast at the Case dei Baff was as good as dinner the evening before.
I ate breakfast here.
Off toward Milan on the one road that runs along the Adda valley running to Lake Como. It was 70km/h, running through commercial areas for virtually the entire distance to SS36 running down the eastern shore of the lake. There, a series of roundabouts leading onto SS36 and SS38, a new freeway running for about 15km back up the Adda Valley threw Zumo, and me, for a loop. None of them had an exit for Milan. Just Lecce, and Sondrio, from where I had come, and a few other towns. I missed the correct exit on one of the roundabouts, and just glimpsed a sign to Milan on the next exit as I went up the ramp onto SS38 and about 15km back up the valley, without an exit, until the new freeway petered out in a partially constructed roundabout. A sign showed Milan could be reached by going around and heading back the other way. The sign had been erected but the roundabout didn’t exist. The only way out was to re-traverse the road I’d just gone over. Back at the roundabouts I just couldn’t see that sign to Milano. I did about 5 revolutions trying to figure out which was the right exit and where Zumo wanted to go.
In the end, I opted for Lecce, which turned out to be a good choice. It’s near the southern tip of the Lake, towards Milan, but I didn’t know that then. The road, for most of the length of the lake shore, runs through a pair of tunnels bored through the hills for many km. Occasionally a glimpse of the lake could be had through a break in the tunnels. Finally, onto the autostrada and into central Milan. Without a GPS, I’d never attempt to enter a large European city. It’s almost impossible to follow a map and keep track of where you are in time to decide where to go. In a car especially, you usually cannot just pull out and work out where you are, or do a quick U-turn to recover, so you get more lost and further away from where you want to be until you can finally stop. It’s just too hard. One problem with Zumo is that he’s too slow to keep up with the changing orientation of the bike in roundabouts, so you are never sure if he wants you to leave at the next exit. You find out when you make a choice and he turns off the pink highlight on the road you are on. Then you have to recover somehow. It must be obvious that I am new to GPSes.
Anyway, Zumo took me along major boulevards, into side streets and alleys barely wider than the bike, tried to make me enter one way streets in the wrong direction, but he got me to Milan Cathedral. It’s easy to park a bike, much harder to park a car here. Italy is attuned to motorcycles. The centre of Milan is largely paved in cobblestones, with tramlines in every direction, something of a hazardous place for motorcycles, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be there in a car.
Where do all these people get cash? Where do they go to the toilet?
My mission was to find an ATM, since I now had no cash. I had ignored countless ATMs while I had cash, now I could not find one anywhere. I guess the clientele of the retailers in the Galleria don’t need cash.
I did see an ATM sign in the Metro, but after following the signs for a few hundred metres underground, it turned out to be a ticket machine for Azienda Trasporti Milano, the Metro!
I gave up, it was time to head for the Best Western Cavalieri Della Corona, at the airport, where my two friends from Melbourne were staying prior to leaving for Australia the next day, after a car tour of northern Italy. A good evening, dinner at the hotel and we polished off an extra bottle that couldn’t go to Australia.
Ben had a SIM he had been using on the trip, and passed it on to me after generously topping it up with 10GB of data. It works great, and my new phone number is +39 3804673320.