the most amazing thing happened...

we have been useing the guidebooks of rick steves to get us around. we have his dvds and we try to watch his travel shows on pbs as often as possible. in short, we are fans.

so, today, in milan, we visited the duomo. a beautiful cathedral (the 4th biggest in the world and took 500 years to build). i was listening to the audioguide while tim was taking pictures. we came around the corner of the church and there was a film crew. tim jokingly said, "look, its rick steves." and low and behold it was.

immediately we start giggling like boy band fans. here is our travel god right in front of us. he is the one who inspired the one carry on bag. he is the one who suggested lucca. and the 500 year old hotel in florence. and the wonderful restaurants. and how to skip the line at the coleseum. right in front of us.

tim went over and asked if we could take a picture. he was very nice to us and obliged. he is much taller in real life than on tv. ricks cameraman took our picture for us, while he was taping. they were filming a special on how they film their specials. we might be in it! the whole meeting was on tape. we acted like blightering idiots, though.

its kind of funny. until today, there has not been one photo taken of tim and i together on this trip. we are too weary to ask someone to do it for fear of the camera being stolen. now, the only phot of tim and i together on this trip (we have used about 10 rolls of film) has rick steves in it.

funny how things work out.

so, for the rest of the day, we will bask in the glow of meeting our travel hero, eat canoli, and wait for our train to depart at 11 p.m. we have a sleeper car tonight and we will wake up in dijon, france around 5:30 tomorrow morning. from there we will take a train to paris and our little apartment in the marais district.

caio!