...After the Pasta at the cafe, we headed back to the Hotel and had a chat with Angelo the owner. Once again the dreaded European Union came up in conversation. I had wondered why prices had gone up a lot since my last visit to Italy a couple of years back.......Angelo told us that taxes had gone up......but he saved the best till last.......income tax is now around 80%........so that's 80 % to the governemnt and 20% for Angelo. I wonder how Angelo would vote if ...

........we walk past skid row and head towards Centro and finally find a metro station, we're curious to see if it's anything like the living hell the French RER was. It's easy and well signposted and so we head to Duomo.....this of course is what every visitor to Milan comes to see. 400 years in the making. Whilst trying to sort our tickets out, we throw the unidentifiable euro coins in...the machine spits them back out....quick as a flash out comes speculator m...

We arise at 8am to a sunny Milan skyline....it's warming up and about 24 Deg C in new money. After checking into the hotel last night, we did the usual thing , sling the bags in the room and head downtown, we were staying in the central part of town so the main drag was just around the corner. Immigrants from Italy's former colonies were taking up two thirds of the pavements flogging Knock off Handbags and very good they looked, there was no aggressive assertiven...

...we're now heading into the French Alps and the scenery is getting much more exciting, there's sheer cliffs and you can see some large mountains looming...this is great. We then stop at Modane which is the last French Station and so they make a small deal of it by stopping for 10 minutes...so we all get off and stretch our legs...you can see ahead that the Italian side of the Alps is even more impressive...... Wow this is really something else, there's snow co...

Okay, let's not be too harsh on Paris....the architecture is very pretty but just needs a good wash. The jokers out there will say that applies to her ladies also..... We head on to Gare De Lyon Station, which is a bit more like the Paris one expects..a grande facade and quite impressive inside. There's plenty of street theatre to watch as the security guards round up the peddlars....elsewhere the army are patrolling the station with machine guns and polite well...