En route to Italy

I love trains and train stations, and public transportation is a great way to get through Europe. Friday was spent traveling from Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, to Pisa, Italy, with a few hours in Milan along the way. 

The Osprey convertible rolling suitcase/backpack has been perfect for this trip. Here it is with the straps exposed, or you can zip a flap over the straps to make it into a regular suitcase. My daypack zips onto the front of it. 

When we got to Milan, we planned to stuff our bags in a locker, as we had done in Germany and Switzerland, but there were no lockers, only official bag check through a person, and the line was miles long. So we toted our bags into town with us and explored some. I was once again grateful for my backpack straps, but it was still heavy, so that limited how much we explored. We sat at this beautiful café in front of the cathedral and plaza and had a nice meal. 

Olives and potato chips are a common appetizer here. The olives, of course, are amazing! We ordered a pizza with funghi e prosciutto, but the picture on the menu of the hot dog and french fries pizza amused me: 

We wanted to go inside the cathedral, but the line for tickets was very long in the hot sun, so we strolled around town on the shady side of the street instead.

And we ran across a small church that we could tour for free. The architect had to find a way to make the choir at the front of the church look deeper than it really was because he didn't have enough room to build at the depth he wished. Here's how it looks from the back - the area behind the head altar looks about 20' deep:

But when you get up beside it, you can see the optical illusion. It's only about 3' deep in reality:

Now back to the train station and on to Pisa!