A day exploring the Italian province of Lombardy

 Our day 3 in Italy starts with the terrible news that the Canucks lost and it's going to a game 7 darn it. Today we are
exploring the area of Legnano which is a beautiful city mid way between Milan and Turin. We were a little lazy this morning
and rather than head for breakfast we chilled in bed. So when we left the hotel we decided to give Italian McDonalds a try.
We headed inside and were amazed by how modern and trendy the Italian McDonalds are. Not surprirsing though as everything in
Italy is extremely trendy and fashionable. The furnature inside the McDonalds is leather designer furnature that you would only see in the top restaurants in Vancouver. They have 2 counters though, one serves the normal McDonalds fare and the other is called Mc Cafe which serves Italian coffee's, Gelato's and pastries. We have a meal each and Glen rounds off with an
Italian Mc Cappicino which is delicious.

 We head west and our first stop is a National park about 20km away on the way again we are driving through the most picturesqe villages and towns and we pass a garden center which is open so Rhonda wants a visit we head inside and the plants that are forsale are all in bloom and are the most amazing colors you could imagine.

Rhonda checks out the prices of plants and is so choked to find that everything is generally around 1 euro to buy. She wishes the garden center was accessable from Canada.

 We get back in the car and assume we are in the national park which is a huge area of forest and then forests are very different to canadian forests with no evergreen trees. We find an old space observatory ontop of a hill and take a break to walk around it's Easter MOnday and at the observatory all the kids that are visiting are allowed to sit at a craft table and they are all making stuffy white easter bunnies it was very cute watching them. on the way out of the observatory we see an old barn with a date of 1878 on the wall and Glen wants to go inside to take pictures he walks around the back and I start to follow him but all of a sudden he said "oh shit someone lives there" Its actually not a barn it's an old old stone house and Glen had almost walked in someones front door.

 We drive back down from the park into the city of Lagnano and by now it is already dark. The buildings in this ancient city are all lit up at
night and the sites are something else. You can see in the pictures the main walking street in the center of the city where it's 9 o'clock at night and people are just sitting around drinking coffee, smoking, chatting and eating ice cream's (gelato) We find a very lively restaurant and head inside for supper. We have a starter of cold meat and tartar sauce with a basket of bread, then we have the most amazing pizza and pasta to share.

Another long and interesting day is over and we are back at
our hotel. Tomorrow we are driving due north straight into Switzerland to check out the chocolate.
Nighty night.