We had a lazy morning at home. Brandon played with his airport in his room. He's been very interested in airplanes since we took our preview trip to Italy in March. Since then he's purchased several Matchbox airplanes and created an airport on his bedroom floor. I helped him build part of his Lego Creator airplane. Its almost done, but he needs to do most of the work.
Katrina spent part of the morning adjusting our budget. Its a bit more work keeping track of our budget here since we don't just debit or credit everything. Cash is much more common in every day life here. We also have to deal with the exchange rate because Katrina gets paid in U.S. dollars. We now watch the exchange rate and pull cash out of the ATM whenever it goes down. It's amazing how much of a difference the high and low days can be.
We took bus z221 into downtown Monza today. You don't just use change to ride the bus here. You need to buy bus tickets. Our local outlet is our favorite Gelattaria...how convenient. We got off the bus in downtown Monza not really knowing where we were. We would find out later that we were only 1 stop away from the train station - part of our adventure was to figure out how to get to the train station. We stopped at one of the monuments in the pedestrian mall and found that they had a free art exhibit upstairs. All three of us enjoyed looking at the drawings, all dated between the 1300's and 1800's. It just boggles my mind that we could be looking at real artwork from that time.
This drawing dates back to 1378.
Brandon enjoyed the art. He did some similiar line drawing in art class at Adams Elementary.We found the pedestrian mall and wandered around for awhile. I find it fun to wander the main streets, but even more fun to wander the little back streets and alleyways. We eventually ended up down by the river and stopped for lunch at La Bettola Bar Trattoria. Katrina had a cheese plate. Brandon and I each had Knochi - a potato type pasta. This restaurant had a nice white cheese sauce on it. After lunch we promised Brandon he could have a granita - a fruit flavored icy drink, like a Slurpee. He chose limone. The kid is addicted to limone.
Our next mission was to find the train station. As we made our way in that direction we ended up passing Monza's Duomo which was finished in 1396 and dedicated to St John the Baptist, patron saint of Monza.
We made our way to the train station and figured the schedule out, where the buses are, etc. Brandon and I watched a couple of the commuter trains stop and one high speed train go through.
After leaving the train station we walked back towards the pedestrian mall to find gelato. Gelato is becoming our Italy indulgence. We ended up doing some shopping along the way. We found two toy stores. Brandon bought another airplane at the first one. We found a kids clothing store, a diecast car store and a few other interesting shops.
We finally decided to catch the bus back home and get gelato at our neighborhood shop. Our local gelato shopkeeper is getting to know us and seems to be giving us bigger portions each time we visit.
After relaxing at home for a few hours, we finished off the evening with a quick shopping trip to Auchan to pickup something quick for dinner and a few other needed item.
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