All aboard!

Oh the trains. As much as we appreciate getting form one city to another overnight, being on a train for 12 hours (going from Barcelona to Milan) was a bit exhausting. Our seats did recline, so sleeping was not impossible but certainly not comfortable either. It seemed that every time I would get comfortable we would stop in another station or be woken up by police officers to check our passports or bags. When we got into Milan around ten, we navigated the train station that felt as big as RDU to find the "left luggage" station to drop our bags off while we were in the city (there was no way that we could have walked around with them for 4 hours. If you need explanation, please reference the post about our backpack/children).  When we were finally free of the kids, we found the metro, decided that the stop with the Duomo sounded good and went off. Lucky for us, our pick was a solid one and we ended up smack dab in front of their duomo, which is situated next to a large and very expensive shopping mall hidden in an old looking kind of market district thing. Who knew that we were actually going to find exactly what we wanted for lunch on our first day in Italy: pizza and gelato! Snce we still had some time to kill, we wandered around a bit and stumbled in a nice park where people bring their dogs to run and play. All the dogs in Europe so far have been really well behaved and their owners seem to care about them even more than Americans do. On top of all that, people actually pick up after their dogs and so they seem to be allowed basically everywhere...trains, public squares, unleashed on streets, shops, and even historic places. Seeing a "no dogs allowed" sign is the exception, not the norm for sure.  Eventually we tore ourselves away from the sunny bench we had settled on and made our way back to the train station and our bags without a hitch. Successfully stopping off there gave us a boost of confidence it think. We didn't really have any sort of plan of what to do with our time and honestly I don't think either of us even looked at a map before the one in the metro station. Never the less, we made a quick decision and went with it and had a wonderful stop before boarding another train for 4 hours (ick). Trains are wonderful in theory but being in seat in a small train car for about 18 out of the past 24 hours is not ideal. Stopping off at a track every few hours was an unexpected and not pleasant surprise too...I think since our only experience with long travel is on a plane, which really can't stop at all, that's what we were anticipating.  The most unsettling part of riding is when we pass another train on the tracks. Both trains are going about 90 miles an hour and there is what feels like about 6 inches between the two trains. It makes me jump every time! For harry potter fans reading, it feels and sounds about what i think aparating would be like: a big pop, like a suction being released, then a rush of wind and everything is a blur. Oh well. Next train ride, we will be downloading movies to pass the time better... also maybe taking some Benadryl to help me sleep!