Europe Winter Trip - Part 2

Milan – Italy

We travelled from Zurich to Milan with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB/CFF/FFS), then we checked in @ IBIS Milano Hotel. Unfortunately, the hotel location was not easy to find, and to make it worst, it was quite a long walk from Metro Station.









The snow was very thick in Milan. So much for planning to take pictures of every interesting spots and objects. It was so cold that I put my glove covered hand safely in my jacket’s pocket. The white snow covering the area was nice to see but not so much to walk on. Walking became harder as the street turned dirty and slippery.













In Europe (winter time), it starts to get dark around 5pm, and clothing stores are normally close around 7-8pm.


The next day, we went to San Siro stadium. The ticket is €12 to enter the museum and the stadium tour (including the changing room).


The green seats are for Inter Milan supporters,

the blue seats are for AC Milan supporters, the red seats = neutral, the grey seats are for the VIP – the appointed people such as sponsor, etc. They pay €3,500/annum for the VIP seats.

Then, we joined daily tour to La Scala Opera House,

Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle



Duomo Church
The interior of the chruch is breathtakingly BEAUTIFUL!



It takes 500 years to build and it’s the 3rd largest church in the world.

The last supper Da Vinci painting

It’s a dry wall painting, that’s why the colour is faded.



Note: Milan’s restro has a cover seat charge. The Italian (Chinese owner) restro charged us for €2.5/person and Fusion charged us for €4.5/person. What a rip off!


Venice – Italy

We were stranded in Milan train station due to the heavy snow. The train was late for about 1 hour and when we got in the train (Trenitalia), it was not moving for about 2 hours or so.

Our weariness faded away as we saw Venice with our very own eyes. The city is simply GORGEOUS!


We went to St Marco – St Zacharia by boat and checked in Lux Hotel.

Guess what? Our room was on the third floor and the hotel has no lift! HUGE thanks to my friends for carrying the luggage for me!!! (can’t lift it myself due to my back condition).

We joined the daily tour, and gondola ride was the first one on schedule. Yippie!












I gotta say the way travel industry promotes the gondola ride and its romantic setting is a bit overrated. During the ride, there were times when the gondolier was talking on his mobile phone, chatted with other fellow gondolier, etc. –far from romantic ;p


The tour guide then took us for a walking tour around the city.

While she was explaining about one of the church, guess who did Sandhy see? Yes, it’s Sir Elton John! I managed to take quick shot of him.






Early morning, we checked out Lux Hotel. The tide was high and the street were all covered with water (approx. 5cm) so we dragged our luggage and walked through the table tracked that has been prepared last night. What an experience! Bye Venice...





Rome – Italy

We checked in at Mercure Hotel and after a quick change of outfit (the weather in Rome was much warmer), we went out again for our Vatican Museum tour.

We turned up 15 minutes late as we got lost and couldn’t find the meeting point. We were so disappointed as we thought we have missed the tour, but later we found out the tour was actually cancelled. The museum was closed early on that day 24 Dec 09 due to the christmas season. Yay, at least we got our money back!

After a relax late lunch, we went to St Peter Basilica.


and Trevi Fountain.



The following day, we went to Colosseum (the first Christmas day open after 25 years – thank God for the favor!), and it’s surrounding