Off to a Good Start

Our flights went off without a hitch and we arrived in Milan today (Thursday) at 6:00 am. We took a shuttle into the city, picked up a car and headed for Bergamo, a hill town about 30 miles from Milan.

With the help of our GPS system, we found our apartment just a block from the one of the gates to the upper town (Citta Alta). Our new Italian cell phone accounts (more about that later) made it easy to connect with our landlady. We're delighted with our digs for this first leg of our stay -- a fully modernized apartment in a sixteenth century building, complete with courtyard and frescoes dated 1527!

After getting settled, we took off to spend the afternoon wandering the cobbled streets and enjoying the piazzas, churches, shops, and views of the Citta Alta. We made a foray to a market for somethings to stock our frig and then headed home to enjoy our happy hour and dinner in our temporary home.

About the phones... For any of you who might be planning a trip like this, or even a shorter stay, you might want to consider getting a SIM card in the country you're visiting. Before we left home, we had T-Mobile "unlock" our cell phones, which means that the phones will now accept other carriers' cards. In essence, our own phones now have Italian phone numbers and we can make calls here as if we were locals. This is helpful for making reservations, contacting landlords to arrange to pick up apartment keys, and even keeping track of each other! All incoming calls are free (for us, not the callers), regardless of their point of origination. We know people who buy new phones to do this, but that is totally unnecessary if you have a phone capable of international use and if your cell provider uses SIM cards. We got two pre-paid SIM cards for 8 euros and they came with 10 euros of talk time credit!! Our deal of the day, for sure.

Time to close; Tom's asleep on the couch and I'm nodding and can barely type; we'll soon be making up for all that lost sleep!

We'll post some pix soon; tonight, we just don't have it in us!

Ciao!

Mary Ellen