Goodbye Elise

15.2
Spent the day in Milan today before putting Elise on the plane home tomorrow. Found the hotel (FINALLY – the directions were less than ideal) and caught the hotel shuttle to the airport, airport shuttle to the Duomo, then walked around the Duomo neighborhood for a few hours. Got in to see La Scala, where the signs all said “No photos!” but the guards all said “No flash!” So the pictures are mostly kinda on the yellow side, but some are pretty good. Hopeful of getting to see something here before we leave – the tickets range in price from 15E to 250E. Have to have a look at the schedule when we get home.

When we had finished dinner and were on our way back to the bus stop, we saw that the Duomo was still open, so we had to have a look. I want to see it in daylight – it was impressive but spooky in the half-light of early evening.

We retraced our steps toward the shuttle stop through the mall section of the Piazza del Duomo, and stopped at H&M to get some earrings and hairclips at their sale, but discovered shortly thereafter that we were well and truly lost. When I asked a bus driver where the shuttle was, he told us to get on, he was going by there. I said I didn’t have tickets for us yet. He shrugged and said, “eh, it’s only two stops.” Then when we got to the correct stop, two gentlemen who were getting off said, “Come with us, we’ll show you where the ticket window is.” This was useful because while it was less than 2 blocks away, it was in a non-obvious corner of the piazzale where we stopped. Tickets acquired, bus arrived about 15 minutes later, all good.

The girls are quite excited about having their own hotel room (the hotel didn’t have any triples, but the 2 doubles were not, in fact, terribly expensive). They may or may not sleep tonight. I’m not going to worry about it. It’s their last night together for quite some time. Sleep is not that necessary tonight.

16.2
Got Elise to the airport in plenty of time this morning, and sat with her for about 90 minutes before her personal stewardess arrived. The woman assured me that she was assigned to Elise’s flight and so would be the one with her until they got to Charles de Gaulle Airport, at which point another Air France person would pick her up at the gate and take her to the next plane. And away they went.

I had booked a different hotel for the second night for Rose and me – a little flashier, with an indoor pool and in-room massage so we could be a little pampered while we were sad. We’d have done better to stay at the Holiday Inn. The pool was too cold to swim in, the in-room massage was not expensive but was also not very good, and the wifi kept going out. However, I went for a walk to find us some dinner, and found a little Sicilian takeout place where the owner was so excited that an American who spoke ok Italian was in her shop that she gave me bread and dessert for free. We had spent 70E on dinner the night before and it wasn’t that great. This was 12E and was awesome. Live and learn.

17.2
While at breakfast this morning, Aurora pointed out to me that the people at the table in the corner spoke English, and had a little girl who seemed to be roughly Aurora’s age. I said, so go talk to her. It took a while, but Ro finally screwed her courage to the sticking place and did not fail! And in fact, ended up talking to Lauren, who had just turned 9, for over an hour, while I eventually got to chatting with Lauren’s mother, Kylie. The girls got along so well that we exchanged email addresses and will try to keep in touch. I want to go to England next year if we can POSSIBLY manage it, to show the girls London and to visit Steffi and Karen and Farrukh, and yes, Lauren. That would be a really lovely couple weeks. Great, saving now for London and for Dubai. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to buy a house any time soon!

Easy drive home. House seems quiet without Elise. Trying to remember that this is better for her, even if it’s sadder for us.