Off the bike I'm less able as a traveller. Resorting all my things to enable posting home is often for me a final vacation decamping. Today finding the three post offices was the first of many frustrations. A visit to the Sforza castello cheered me somewhat and the Flora hotel management have been friendly offering me a free chair and all important WC while I await the midnight train departure across the awe inspiring piazza.
The first two ufficio postale refused my request to post home three bags. My aunt needs to be warm after all.
This is after deciphering the mini carte di citte often asking passers by....then a 15 minute wait only to be told in Italian the next destination as they have not boxes.
Finally my Kafkaesque search is over as I arrive at the grandest and most beflagged po. in all Milano. Only to find the box lack has spread here too. The postie was trying to help and produced some cardboard. Wielding my rather threatening blade I dressed my three bags and then loudly taped the entire thing into submission. Pathetic according to nga packing standards but all that was possible in the circumstances. I was even reassuringly provided a tracking number. Now I can physically carry panniers, and bagged bike through the very crowded Milano stazione centrale onto and off the train.
Tomorrow morning after sleeping with 4 people, I must reassemble the bike on the Gare de Lyon platform to ride across town to the Montparnasse hotel. From there I can easily access the airport bus to renegotiate the flight home.
The Sforza dynasty was a very wealthy one. Last seen by me in Verona both there and here magnificently castled. Racing each other to place themselves on the ancient Sforza podium....first Napoleon I and then Victor E. Their calling card on either side of a copied Roman arch framing the much grander Castello garden vista. Dynastic concerns flamboyantly occupy a great deal of european history.
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