Milan

it ends up that Silvia did graciously invite me to see Garda Lake, where she lives. First though, I had to fly to Milan so I figured I'd spend a day or two there, see the Duomo, etc. as luck would have it, Maria - a fellow regular at Cesca back on the upper west side - was there.

I flew Ryanair into Bergamo airport. Ryanair is a great product. No frills but they do exactly what they say they're going to do. My only negative experience with them was my own fault. I booked online via my phone and somehow reserved a flight for two weeks later than I meant to. Jill and I had discovered a great new (to us) Indian restaurant on Goya  near her apartment and that's where I discovered my blunder. I decided to kick the can of fixing that until the next morning and was relieved to learn that the error would only cost me €50.

Anyway, I took the bus from Bergamo to Milan but not without incident. The bus crashed. Some dope stopped halfway into the right lane while apparently deciding whether to hit Burger King in the rest area. The dope pulled into BK but left a car behind it, who also had to stop, exposed to traffic. We slammed into that car pretty hard, but the woman who was driving seemed okay. Not so much for her car though. We waited about 45 minutes for a replacement bus to come, and the national police came onboard to photograph all of our ids. Then we were on our way.

I walked around Milan for the rest of the day and Maria invited me to meet her and two Italian guys for aperitivos (kind of like Italian tapas hour I guess) at a happening place called Radetzky. She told me their names were Gabriele and Stevie and for some reason I thought they were going to be woman. They're really nice guys who run with a fancy crowd. Stefano (Steveie) kept pushing for us to go with them to his friends apartment to sing  karaoke. Not my bag, and I tried hard to bow out gracefully but eventually relented.

The apartment was pretty near the center of town and I knew the apartment was gonna be great when after pushing the elevator button to the top floor, the door opened into a nook in the living room. There were about 15 people there - some of them English speakers. It was the nicest apartment I've ever been to - only beating Daves old place because of the elevator and the terraces. The living / dining room is about 20 x 50 feet with sliding glass doors that open onto a 15 foot wide wrap around terrace. There are big trees and all sorts of plants and flowers and small lounge area with couches and chairs, all beautifully lit. On the far side there's a view of the Duomo and a staircase that goes up to another terrace with more trees, more Duomo views and a humungous hammock under a tent like thing. So after a couple of drinks, Stefano and Gabriele fired up the karaoke machine and got at it. They were fantastic.

This was the ultimate batchelor pad. The host, Christian had a bunch of guitars, a small electronic drum kit, flip-down piano keyboard and a violin: I guess for impromptu jam sessions. They played from about 10 til 1:30. Maria only introduced ourselves to Christian on the way out to thank him for letting us hang out. Super nice guy. Great night thanks to Maria who seems to attract very nice and interesting people!