Italy: Milan (+bonus)

On the way home Friday, we stopped in Milan for a quick lunch. 

The Milan Cathedral is gorgeous, but we didn't have time to tour the inside.

me

Milan is a fashion and design capital. Shops representing most of the Italian brands you'd recognize are contained inside the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuel II next to the cathedral. Versace, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Armani, Gucci, and the like are all lined up side-by-side in this covered shopping mall built in the 1800s.

not your average mall

Pete and the kids in front of Versace

True to fashion-capital form, we were even ushered out of the way for a photo shoot in progress...

bridal dresses perhaps?

the photographer mostly took photos of the trains against the lovely tile floors

We hunted down lunch, even though the gelato was tempting as always...

extra fancy

Although we originally headed for McDonalds rather than brace ourselves for a full European style event-meal, we ended up at a super cheap but yummy fast food pizza joint called Spontini.

standing room only inside the restaurant, so a windowsill will do

And with that, we were headed back toward Luxembourg.

A fun side-note before leaving Italy, though: Pete and Daphne were reading through the Percy Jackson book series before and during our trip. They read independently but check in with each other to discuss and keep on approximately the same pace. Apparently in one of the books, a character becomes addicted to an Italian snack food called Fonzies while the demigods are all in Italy, and even manages to pay road toll with them at one point. Pete stumbled across some in a grocery store and it immediately became our snack of choice for the road. They're basically a less orange, slightly more natural-tasting Cheeto.

On the way home, we stopped in Germany overnight under the guise of needing a break from driving, and then announced Saturday morning that we'd be spending the day Europa Park. This was actually our second attempt at surprising the kids with a trip to Europa Park (you can read about the first time here). This time went better, although they were still mostly just confused.

So here are a few photos quick of that to close out the post:

fittingly, we got the Italia car of the bobsled ride :)