Sunday 25th December - Christmas day

We set the alarm so I could wake up at 3am local time, which would be 1 pm Tasmanian time, to wish everyone a happy Christmas - at least Ryan answered his phone! Eventually caught up with Michael and Mum, and Peter spoke with Keisha, Quade and Marissa, and his Mum, Dad and brother Andrew, so we were able to send Christmas wishes to everyone.
I managed to drag Peter along to church for Christmas Mass, all in Italian of course, but we at least understood when to sit down and stand up.
We then headed down town and spent the rest of the day walking around Parco Sempione, Via Dante, the Piazza Duomo, etc. One of the few museums open today featured two paintings by Georges La Tour, so we stood in line to view those and then continued to wander around the city centre area. We ended up in a bar (as you do) and had a lovely afternoon drinking and chatting with the locals. Sitting next to us for a while were a couple of guys - Guido and Michael - both of whom were bus drivers, but weren't working at the moment; Guido was off on six months sick leave due to a liver problem, but that wasn't stopping him knocking back the Grappa; Michael was born in Melbourne and his mother still lives in Carlton, but has spent most of his life in Milano. After they left, their spots were taken by a Malaysian couple, both lawyers; she spoke very highly of the UTAS Law Faculty, and said she had had friends who had studied at UTAS. The young lady who took our wine orders was lovely, particularly the more she picked on Peter and his attempts to speak Italian, and the fact that he kept eating all the food that she bought out, leaving nothing for me. She told us that she spoke 5 languages - Italian, English, Romanian, Albanian and a little Spanish. Pete told her that he spoke 5 languages too - English, Australian, American and Smithton, plus a little Italian. Several glasses of wine later, we made our way back to the tram stop, and then back to the hotel.
Yesterday at Como and today in Milano have been quite eye-opening - if I put my entire collection of Vogue magazines together, it still wouldn't add up to the amount of Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Armani that's been on show, not to mention the fur coats ... Just amazing. On the negative side, nearly everyone seems to smoke, so i think we've inhaled a fair bit of secondhand smoke over the last few days.
Sadly it appears that the concept of Boxing Day sales hasn't quite taken off in Milano, and most stores will still be closed, but I'm planning on heading out tomorrow to see what bargains might be out there.