Milano

The city of Milan is really only about an hour and a half from our home, however, it seems the only time we head there is to catch a flight or visit the US Consulate.  Last Friday was no exception to that trend.  Noella's and Luca's passports were up for renewal.  My photograph from 10 years ago doesn't look like I have changed too much.  However, it is nice that Luca's 2 week old baby picture can now be replaced with something more current.  The service at the consulate is always on-time, orderly, efficient and for sure a breath of fresh air when dealing with all things bureaucratic.  The kids thought it was pretty cool that they were in "America" for a few minutes too.

The weather was gorgeous topping out at 70 degrees, so we decided to make a quick tourist stop and grab some lunch before catching the Metro back to our car and heading home.  We of course headed to the famous Duomo and Galleria.  The church is immense.  We always walk out of these huge cathedrals impressed...not by their sheer beauty, but for the lost souls that believe and embrace the Catholic religion.  This time we had a lot of questions and explaining to do to the kids.  No, they could not light a candle and no, they could not walk up the steps of the confession booth to get a closer look.

Flat Stanley is visiting us from Cedarville, Ohio so we took him along for the ride.

The famous galleria filled with top fashion stores, like Prada, restaurants and more.  We ate at the not so prestigous McDonalds.

The piazza in front of the Duomo

He is indeed everywhere!

On our way home we stopped at a new outlet mall.  Jonathan was in the market for some new jeans and from the highway we saw they had several American brandname stores.  However, the outlet prices of 60-80 euros for a pair of jeans was out of the question.  It was not a wasted trip though as I did get a set of ceramic lined cooking pans that I needed to replace my peeling teflan ones.  My new pans are super nice to cook with!  Maybe we will venture back to the outlets again when the Gap opens up this May.  The atmosphere of the outlets definitely made us think of shopping in the US.