Some of you remember that last year in Europe we discovered a couple of technical glitches. One, you put a SIM card in, but the data portion won't work for a two day hold in many countries. France and Germany were both this way last year, although that may have changed. Two, our beloved Apple phone with the brand spanking new Siri did NOT work in France. "Siri don't do France." No directions, no restaurant recommendations, no nothing. We couldn't get out of the airport parking lot without going back for the GPS.
But this year, in Switzerland and Italy, we were able to buy and use the SIM cards right away. And Siri's new Apple Maps. Mostly as pedestrians in Switzerland. But they were flawless! That's right, the troublesome, "no good", crappy maps of Apple worked just dandy in Switzerland as pedestrians. Landmarks were listed, restaurants, and of course, the Apple store itself in Zurich. So we felt pretty confident that we wouldn't need a GPS with our rental car to around in Italy.
We pick up in Milan, where we went finally from the airport in our rental car to a to be determined hotel. With no working SIM card. This was a minor problem, and the airport didn't have a TIM store which was the recommended telecom we were in search of. But we saw a huge mall right next to the airport and after a couple of circles around the round-a-bout, we found our way to the huge mall across the freeway.
I took a picture of the parking area and off we went to find an Italian SIM card for our phones. And some dinner. And we found our destination, got the nice lady to put two SIM cards in, then sat down to our first Italian pasta in a mall and found a hotel to go to. I want you to know that even in the mall the pasta is perfectly en dente, and sauced to order, it seemed amazing and we ate it all.
In driving to our hotel we thought no problem. Our cocky selves have traveled numerous other places with no problem. But then we left the mall and we couldn't find our car. We had stepped out into the parking area, we thought from the same floor, but there was no Orange A 3. There was no Orange. There was no A. There was no 3. And the mall is closing. This took us about 20 minutes of asking random mallgoers, flashing my phone and asking if they knew where my picture of Orange A 3 was located. It felt like a bad case of where's Waldo. But no one knew. One guy said "What color is the car?" I said, "White". He said, "Oh well! with his hands up in the air and a head shake, like that was going to be impossible to find.
Finally Richard decided there must be another parking floor so back in we went, up one floor and voila! Success. There's Orange. There's A, and there's our car. Yeah! And Whew! I have spent a number of years taking myself through the worst case scenarios to combat my own fears. I feel like I'm at a point where I could handle most things, and I was clear that eventually we would find the missing car. But someplace deep down, you know you are not "home". And so there's just a shade more anxiety when things go wrong. Fortunately I am married to a Zen Master who is just okey-dokey with all of what life throws at you. I really appreciate Richard and especially so when my own anxious meter could get stuck in the open position.
So we jauntily left the mall to head to the address of the hotel. We missed a turn on a round-a-bout and took twice as long to get there. Siri's a bit slower to catch up to where we are on the map, but once we figured that out, it worked great. The "Art Hotel" even had a bar and free breakfast and an enormous bathtub! All is well here in Milan.
In closing, that mall was by far the largest three storied, solid acre of materialistic extravagance that I have ever seen in my life. I've not been to the Mall of America, but I've been to three of the "Mills" malls (Franklin, Arizona and Colorado) and this one was by far the largest. My biggest memory is that everything was shiny. Glossy floors, lacquered furniture, shiny plastic and sparkling lights. And beautifully designed. That was all we saw of Milan for the whole trip, but it's been said that Milan is the "new" Italy. Industrial, design and manufacturing are primarily here.
And that "20 minutes" that the car was lost was likely only 5 to 10:)
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