Day 11 - Firenze/Milano/Bergamo

We got up and left our hotel in Fiesole earlz and headed into Florence. The plan initiallz was to try and park downtown somewhere and then find Faye a room for the night before dropping the car off right in the middle of the city. Once we got up closer to downtown though, we realized that finding a place and getting the car back on time was not practical so we attemped to follow the street map that the guz at the hotel gave us, however there were way too many one ways for this, so when we got within a few blocks of the garage Faye pulled over and i walked the streets until i found a route through all the one ways. From there we walked together to the train station and i helped Faye with her bags. We left each other at the train station just before noon and i jumped on a 12:14 train for Milano. The train took about 4 hours because of delays on the tracks.
The Milano train station was very cool with a huge barn or greenhouse type roof (not sure if that makes sense or not), but either way it looked very cool. I wanted to take pics, but i unfortunately and stupidlz packed both my cameras very deep in mz bag. I'm still able to fit all my luggage on mz back which is great (don't need an extra bag yet). Very nice to be able to do that and always have my hands free (George, if you're reading, you'd be proud).
From Milano i jumped a bus for about an hour to Bergamo airport and then from there, another bus to the city. From there i had to take a second bus to my hostel located in Ostello (i think its a suburb of Bergamo).
I had no clue where iw as going and i asked this old ladz beside me if she had a clue which stop i had to take (in my best italian...i know maybe 10 words now). She ended up speaking not bad English and told me that her husband died fighting with Canadian forces in the war and how she'd be more than happz to show me to my hostel and she actually got off the bus ahead of her stop and walked with me the 3 blocks from the bus stop to my hostel, then i guess back to the bus stop, waited for the next bus, and then kept going. I guess not all Italians are rude dicks after all.
I checked in around 7pm and then took a differnet city bus into the old part of Bergamo. Yet ANOTHER medieval fortress town. I'm ALMOST getting tired of them and am looking forward to seeing other parts of Europe. I ate dinner on my own (pizza with fries on it....weird cause i thought the fries were coming on the side) , then back to the hostel and hung out with an Italian guy and an Irish guy, both in my dorm room. Me and the Italian guy, Carlo, fly from the same airport around the same time tomorrow so we're going to make sure each other is up.
There are 8 guys in mz room, the two guys i mentionned earlier, two older Italian guys (40's), two Croatian men (40's) and a 69 year old man from the Netherlands. He told me he spent 2002 travelling Canada (went through Cochrane, but did not remember IF), because he wanted to see the country of his liberators before he died. He remembers the Canadian freeing his town in 1945 when he was 9. He sazs his favorite cheese is Canadian orange cheddar with almonds in it (?) because he remembers a Canadian soldier giving him a big chunk of it when he was starving. Interesting, but i've never heard of cheese with almonds in it (although i told him that i love it too...haha).
Up earlz tomorrow and flying to London to start part 2 of my trip!!!!