The end's not near, it's here

Today is the final day for me here in Italy. My flight to Paris leaves Milan tomorrow morning and weather permitting, on to Boston from there.

I spent today wandering around Milan for a bit. I took the subway to Milano Centrale train station and then took another train to Piazza Duomo for one final time then walked around, had some lunch and did some work in the media center, which is slowly being converted back into the convention center.

From there, it was back to the hotel where I did some more writing and got things situated for tomorrow. One of the big things I did was book an Uber for tomorrow morning so that getting from the hotel to Milano Centrale will not be a difficult process. Otherwise, the process was going to involve me dragging my suitcases to one of the local train stations and onto a subway to get to Milano Centrale. That was not something I was looking forward to.

But a little more on last night's Closing Ceremony. I wrote last night's blog post on the train back from Verona and at that point, things had gone ok, though sitting on the cold stone for a few hours is probably nobody's idea of fun. That being said, it was a pretty cool location to hold the Closing Ceremony. It was by far, the smallest Closing Ceremony I have been to. The Verona Arena is not a huge place and they didn't put anybody behind the stage area as they wouldn't be able to see. So, the sheer number of people in the arena was definitely the smallest number in my four Closing Ceremony experiences.

There was a slight issue when we got back to Milan, as the Metro wasn't running since it was so late. So I ended up having to take a local bus that I had never taken before. That in and of itself was an experience, as the bus was a little late and the driver was definitely bent on making up that time, which in and of itself is fine, but those cobblestone streets and old buses make for a bit of a bumpy ride at 1:30 a.m.

It's fairly fitting that my Olympics ended with a little bit of a crazy transportation situation. That's kind of been the story of Milan-Cortina for me.


The Closing Ceremony took place in the historic Verona Arena and that in and of itself was pretty cool.

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