Wednesday 27th February
Arrived dead-beat and staggered in to the Hotel Mennini; it was not worth even staggering in to.
Read and learn: NEVER believe hotel Websites, OK ?! -- the hoteliers always manage to come up with a photographer who can find a frame, somehow (in the *extremely* limited space available), that makes their hotel rooms look nice. And human-being-sized. And, of course, the on-line pic.s never show the fact that the ceilings are often tissue-thin ...
Sighh ... OK; I admit I'm exaggerating -- they're not all like that; but a disturbingly large number is covered by my description.
So. They put us into a first-floor room -- always a bad sign; directly above the driveway for the next morning's collecting of garbage; so small that I stubbed my toes on the wall getting out of bed; and directly under some kind of sound-funnel. We could only guess that up there the entire hotel staff (not very large, I suspect) was preparing something; it went on till well after midnight and started again around 5:00am.
Arrived dead-beat and staggered in to the Hotel Mennini; it was not worth even staggering in to.
Read and learn: NEVER believe hotel Websites, OK ?! -- the hoteliers always manage to come up with a photographer who can find a frame, somehow (in the *extremely* limited space available), that makes their hotel rooms look nice. And human-being-sized. And, of course, the on-line pic.s never show the fact that the ceilings are often tissue-thin ...
Sighh ... OK; I admit I'm exaggerating -- they're not all like that; but a disturbingly large number is covered by my description.
So. They put us into a first-floor room -- always a bad sign; directly above the driveway for the next morning's collecting of garbage; so small that I stubbed my toes on the wall getting out of bed; and directly under some kind of sound-funnel. We could only guess that up there the entire hotel staff (not very large, I suspect) was preparing something; it went on till well after midnight and started again around 5:00am.
Thursday 28th February &
Friday 1st March
Next day we were out of there and in the Hotel Mediolanum well before morning-tea-time, after hitting the pavements for a bit of local research -- involving a lot of tariff-shock on our part. It was much more expensive, unfortunately; but it was commensurately more pleasant. We *hate* bad hotels (who doesn't ?!).
In and out of town by tram, we occupied our- selves very satisfactorily, including wandering up and down Via Monte Napoleone as if we could actually afford to buy things there. When we went to visit La Scala's Museum and found it was 'temporarily' at the Arcimboldi (which is Milan's new theatre, and we don't know the relationship between it and Teatro La Scala), we searched unsuccessfully for the Arcimboldi, following pointing arrows down via Mazzini for *ages*, and then gave up the hunt -- just as well !, for it turned out to be absolutely MILES away !
On another occasion, and far more interestingly, we found a PR exhibition in the Piazza San Fedele of some wonderful electric scooters, from
Friday 1st March
Next day we were out of there and in the Hotel Mediolanum well before morning-tea-time, after hitting the pavements for a bit of local research -- involving a lot of tariff-shock on our part. It was much more expensive, unfortunately; but it was commensurately more pleasant. We *hate* bad hotels (who doesn't ?!).
In and out of town by tram, we occupied our- selves very satisfactorily, including wandering up and down Via Monte Napoleone as if we could actually afford to buy things there. When we went to visit La Scala's Museum and found it was 'temporarily' at the Arcimboldi (which is Milan's new theatre, and we don't know the relationship between it and Teatro La Scala), we searched unsuccessfully for the Arcimboldi, following pointing arrows down via Mazzini for *ages*, and then gave up the hunt -- just as well !, for it turned out to be absolutely MILES away !
On another occasion, and far more interestingly, we found a PR exhibition in the Piazza San Fedele of some wonderful electric scooters, from
