9/1 Milan
Friday morning - Race Weekend! What better way to get our engines running with a slice of chocolate cake. Breakfast Cake! They served it and we ate it! The hotel's breakfast buffet standard bacon, eggs, cereals, etc. lined the table, but at the end they had chocolate cake, apple pie, and apricot tarts as if the chef forgot them from the night before. It must be some customary service because each brekkie we had in Milan always had the assortment of cakes. Technically a muffin is like cake, so why not just change the shape and remove the muffin wrapper?
Back to the racing, to let you know Milan is the closest major city to Parco Di Monza. Inside the largest walled park in Europe lies droves of Ferrari fans for their "home race" in Italy. The original Monza oval rivals our Spa visit the week prior as one of the oldest and most historic race locations. The track has changed in the decades but it still is the Cathedral of Speed for the Italians. There are still remains of the old track that are accessible if you ask a security guard nicely. I attempted to climb the steeply banked track but it wasn't doable. I could close my eyes and see the brave drivers in their leather helmets and no seatbelts blasting around. Those guys had a very alarming rate of going home in a pine box but modern safety has really changed the game even with the cars going to much faster.
On Fridays all the grandstands are open to all spectators, so it's great to be able to watch and explore the track. After the morning session we picked up some chicken parm at the food tent and then continued jumping from stand to stand. The Ferrari fanatics even bring basketball court sized Ferrari flags that they drape from one end to the other of the grandstands. Fitting that the giant red sheet just passed right over us and we for a brief moment were on TV - under a giant Ferrari flag.
That night we scored a sim card for the spare phone. The temporary numbers are good for country to country, and since the remainder of our trip was only in Italy the sim card was our source to instant internet access. We set it up to be a wifi hotspot and then used our day to day phones to do live timing and scoring of the events since the Monza track didn't have any FM radio broadcasting.
Two blocks from the hotel was the #12 tram and that took us right to the heart of downtown Milan. We walked the square to see the Milan Duomo (cathedral) built in the 1380s and completed in 1965. Just your average 300 year construction project. The stomach didn't seem to care about the gorgeous church before us and with the new wifi hotspot we found a highly rated pizza place about 10 blocks away. Commence the walking! ...and the rerouting. The pizza place was closed! There was a sign on the door and a picture of a boat. Clearly Friday night is best suited for fishing. The sign pointed to another pizza place that was their sister restaurant and it was another 7 blocks away. It took was highly rated, and after trekking there it too was closed! That night we just plopped into chairs at whatever place was open and it was good food but it was more memorable striking out on those other two restaurants. After the #12 took us back to our hotel, we passed a bakery that was still open and took their last slice of chocolate cake (in honor of September “birthday month” for someone) and devoured it on a park bench before turning in for the night.
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