A brief history of mine

Back.

Yup, managed to survive the trek across Europe and return safely and in schedule.

We set off on Friday morning, and early start was required due to having to travel from Glasgow to Prestwick, a mere jaunt of 45 mins or so. We did, of course, have the delay of arguing about something totally innocuous, which is a tradition when we're travelling. It usually results in us deciding not to go, me jumping in the car and driving 200 foot before stopping and going back. So, this meant we were a few minutes late leaving, and I had to hammer the 1.0L Corsa along the M(A)77, a shitty little road which is claiming to be something it's not. We got to the airport in plenty time, and I dropped the passengers off at the door before parking, to save them the walk. The car park wasn't too full, so I got to choose my space, then sauntered into the airport myself. A "Gate Closed" sign greeted me. It had just been erected as the scouting party arrived, but had been up for a few minuted before I got there. To give them credit, they checked us in without a problem, but it could have been messy.
Flight was pretty uneventful, got to Milan, which was hot and sunny, a nice change to what we had left back home. Done a bit of jumping on bus to town, metro to nearest station to hotel and taxi the last leg. The room wasn't ready, fortunately the lovely receptionist spoke perfect English, with either a scunthorpe or swedish accent. Yeah, I don't know why I couldn't tell which either. We headed to the bar to wait out the cleaners, leaving our baggage at reception to save humphing it around. When the lovely lady came over to tell us the room was ready a few minutes later, we headed back to reception to ask for our bags. "They're in your room sir." was the bemused response. A nice touch, UNA Scandinavia gets a little mention for that one.
We wandered around the area a little, enjoying the sunshine and looking for food. It became clear we were outside the actual centre, about 20 mins walk. It was surprisingly difficult to find any place open for food, so we ended up wandering into a kind of bakery which did slices of pizza, on a kind of really thick base. I have to say, it was tastier than a cheese and onion pastie from Greggs. To get into the centre of town we were advised to get a tram. You buy a ticket for 1 Euro at the hotel reception, or one of the magazine stands dotted around and it's valid for 45 minutes travel on the trams, or one journey on the Metro. Standing at the tramstop for mere minutes gave me time to figure out which way town was, and which number tram to get. The system was pretty easy, even for the Itialianly challenged like myself. A number 33 arrived, we jumped on, and I attempted to hand over my tickets to the driver. He waved me up the tram, obviously completely uninterested in such trivialities. I idly wondered how they knew your ticket had been used, but thought nothing too much about it.
We arrived in the dead centre (Duomo) to the view of an amazing exhibition of the redirection of poor people's cash into a high profile advertising campaign for the catholic church. We decided to just have a glance and then go get some food, saving the proper investigation for Saturday.