Deplane, Customs, (New Stamp in my Passport!), Baggage and out to the Grand Hall to meet our arranged ride to the hotel. Hmmm… no ride appears to have shown up. (Language barrier issue on the phone when I was making the booking as it turns out). Not the best start but we decide that without a cellphone we will just take a ride in a taxi. It was a little bit of a "moment" as our driver did not speak any English and we speak even less Italian even though Grant believes differently! A few white knuckle moments (we are about 50km away from the hotel) and our driver translating the words "bomb" and "London" we acknowledge how grateful we are to not driving in the busy city (oh those motorcycles!!) and we are grateful to be safe today. We arrive at the Uptown Palace Hotel in Milan for our 2 night stay. This is walking distance to the downtown square and Duomo which we will tour tomorrow but will get our bearings today as we walk around downtown Milan.

Our room is not ready so we drop our bags and head out in search of a restaurant that we hoped to experience and to find the Cell Phone Sim card provider. The restaurant was sold out for lunch hour but we made a reservation for dinner. Headed to the Duomo Square (WOW!) and bought our SIM card. (Feeling very progressive!) We strolled the square and although we were both exhausted we pushed through and had a late lunch at an outdoor cafe and our first glass of wine of many to come I am sure.

Our room was ready and around 3:30 and the last thing I remember was Grant talking to me about the rental car arrangements. I woke up just before 7pm to get ready for our dinner reservation at 8. I don't think I have ever done that before as I am not a great one for naps but I think it was less then 2 minutes before I was sound asleep! I mean SOUND asleep!!

Dinner is a little unpretentious, slightly unmemorable frontage type restaurant around the corner from our hotel that I had tracked down on some blogging sites. We had taken a peek at the Antica Hostaria della Lanterna menu in the window during the lunch hour and although it was all in Italian, we imagined that with a translator app we could figure it out. That is the exact opposite of what took place! For dinner we were met by a Nona (who will now be called Nona!) who had no English and spoke a lot of Italian words at us very very quickly. We managed to say … "Yes we had a reservation?" We got that far. She showed us which tables we could choose from. With not a word of English Nona came to the table and said many many more words with great passion. We recognized a few and slowly managed to understand that there was no menu coming our way. It was a meal of choices from the kitchen concept … a list of pastas and sauces… some of which we understood most of it, we did not. With some mutual sounding words and some sign language, we managed to order a bottle of water, a medium carafe of house wine and a plate of pasta each; Grant with his favourite Gorgonzola and mine a Ragu accompanied by some home made bread. (Oil and vinegar with your bread does not seem to be a standard here). Our pasta arrived in a few minutes and although it was excellent, we both admitted later that we were slightly sad that the experience would be over so quickly. However, Grant expressed "Commendatore" and typical for Grant, he has once again charmed a Nona! By now, most of the wine was gone as we finished our fresh gnocchi. Nona returned to say a lot more to us. Grant picked up the word Secondo. Wait… Secondo??!! Oh no… that huge plate of pasta was my starter!? A list of things we once again didn't really recognize was offered to us. Grant managed to convey that we didn't know what she was describing (imagine the gestures!!) so she should choose for us. Brilliant. She split a plate of 2 meats in a gravy sauce and polenta for us. So delicious, but we were both sorry we were already so full! You can guess what happened next… Dolce… or the dessert course. By now we have made a knee deep commitment to this "No menu restaurant" and what they are cooking is what you are going to eat! The food is made with such passion that you really shouldn't say no to another course for fear of A) Missing out on something wonderful and B) Nona getting mad at you or C) BOTH!

Nona's son has now joined us as a waiter but most of the evening was with Nona barking orders at everyone and very quickly asking guests to choose from the list of foods she was offering! We were the only tourists in the place most of the evening and anyone arriving without a reservation were being turned away. We were so glad we had stopped by earlier to ensure our spot where the locals go to eat good authentic home cooking. We were going to pass on dessert and hope to not offend until the magic words for Grant; Tiramisu and Creme Caramel which are two of his favourites. We ordered one of each and although we could not finish (not even close), he ended this meal with an expresso. Realizing what we had just experienced we left knowing that this would be so memorable. We had managed without being able to use a word of English and stumbled through our absent Italian we left wishing we knew how to say "ho mangiato troppo!" *I ate too much!! However, now knowing that there should be one more course left in an Milanese meal, after a nice walk in the rain we had a Spritz Digestive and some great conversation in oversized comfy chairs at our lovely hotel bar to end the evening.

Back in our room (which is beautiful by the way!) I grabbed my laptop to start blogging and Grant had a long bath in our oversized bathtub. Now we turn in for a solid sleep before our Walking Tour of Milan bright and early tomorrow.

Buona Notte!!

Oh and true confessions … the Gelato count has started with .5. We shared a Stracciatella (creamy with chocolate flakes) this afternoon. YUM!